MTH 1202 :Elements of Probability and Statistics Assignment 1

MAKERERE UNIVERSITY
Department of Mathematics.
October, 2020.
Instructions:
(i) Attempt ALL questions.
(ii) You will be guided on how to submit your assignment.

1. (a) The sample data below shows production of a certain product in a Nakasongola based factory:

98, 99, 99, 100, 100, 100, 101, 101, 102

Work out the variance of the sample data.

(b) Consider the Table below:

Weight (Kg) 60-62 63-65 66-68 69-71 72-74

No. of students 5 18 42 27 8
i. Draw a table indicating the weight, frequency, class boundary, class mark and cumulative
frequency.
ii. Draw a histogram for the data given and use it to find the mode.
iii. Compute, first quartile, median, third quartile, inter-quartile range, 80th percentile and 6th
decile.
2. (a) On a given day, 6 people are waiting for a bus.
i. In how many ways can the 6 people be lined up to get on the bus?
ii. If certain 3 people insist on following each other, in how many ways can the 6 people be lined
up?
(b) A committee of size 8 is to be selected from a group of 10 men and 5 women. If a selection is made
randomly, what is the probability that the committee consists of 5 men and 3 women?
3. (a) Given that events A and B are independent such that P (A) = 0.4 and P (B) = 0.6. Find P (Ac U B c ).
(b) A problem in statistics was given to three students A, B and C whose chances of solving were 13 , 1
4
and 12 , respectively. What is the probability that the problem was solved by only one student
assuming that each student solved independently?
(c) A fair die is tossed once. Let A be the event that the outcome is an odd number and B the event
that the outcome is a factor of 6. Investigate whether Ac and B c are independent.
(d) Suppose Y = 0.5 + 20X and the mean and variance of X are 0.25 and 1.5, respectively. Find the
mean and variance of Y.
4. (a) In a certain family, there are three girls; Jane, Hope and Margaret. The girls are on vacation at
home and their respective probabilities of doing kitchen work are 0.3, 0.5 and 0.2. Whenever any one
of them is in the kitchen, their probabilities of breaking a plate are: 0.1, 0.2 and 0.15, respectively.
i. Find the probability of breaking a plate during kitchen work.
ii. If their mother found a broken plate, what is the probability that it was Hope in the kitchen?
(b) A small plane has 30 seats. The probability that any particular passenger will not show up for a
flight is 0.1, independent of the other passengers. The airline sells 32 tickets for the flight. Calculate
the probability that more passengers show up for the flight than there are seats available.
(c) The probability that a student scores an A in Swahili is 0.3. Find the probability that the tenth
student randomly selected is the fifth to score an A.
 MTH 1202 :Elements of Probability and Statistics Assignment 2

5. Joe is a big film fan and on average he likes 25% of the films he watches. During the Fargo Film Festival,
Joe skips his classes and abandons his homework to watch 100 films in a row. Let the random variable X
denote how many of those films he will like.

(a) Write down the formula for the probability distribution of X.

(b) How many of the 100 movies do you expect Joe to like?
(c) What is the standard deviation of the random variable X
(d) Use the Normal distribution to approximate the probability that Joe will like at least 30 of the 100
movies.

6. (a) A random variable Y has probability mass function given by:


 k|y|, for y = −2, −1, 0, 1, 2.
f (y) =
0 otherwise.


Find:
i. the value of k.
ii. P (−1 ≤ Y < 2).
(b) A random variable X has a density function given as:
 x

 6 if 0 ≤ x < 2



1
f (x) = 3 if 2 ≤ x < 4




0 otherwise.


Find:
i. P (1 ≤ X ≤ 3).
ii. cumulative distribution function of X.
(c) A random variable X has a pdf given by:


 ax if 0 ≤ x <1




a if 1 ≤ x < 2



f (x) =
3a − ax if 2 ≤ x < 3








0 otherwise.


Find:
i. the value of a,
ii. P (X ≤ 1.5)
iii. The median of the random variable X.
(d) Makerere University Football Team (MUFT) is participating in Pepsi University league for the
season of 2020. Assuming that it is equally likely for MUFT to either win, draw or lose any of its
matches and suppose that Z represents the number of wins for MUFT for two consecutive matches,
construct a probability distribution for Z.
7. (a) Given that a random variable U is binomially distributed with probability of failure of 0.2 and an
expectation of 9.6. Find:
i. probability of success.
ii. the number of independent trials done for U .
(b) The probability that a patient recovers from a delicate heart operation is 0.75. What is the
probability that exactly 3 of the next 5 patients having this operation survive?
 MTH 1202 :Elements of Probability and Statistics Assignment 3

(c) Suppose that the probability that any given person will believe a tale about the origin of Coronavirus
is 0.8. What is the probability that the third person to hear this tale is the first one to believe it?
(d) Suppose that X is a continuous random variable which is uniform on [ 61 , 1
2 ]. Find P (X ≥ 14 )
8. (a) Given that X represents a Poisson random variable with mean λ > 0.
i. State the probability mass function for X.
ii. Show that its expectation is λ.
(b) A certain area of Uganda is on average hit by 4 landslides a year. Find the probability that:
i. in a given year this area will be hit by exactly 3 landslides.
ii. in a two year period, the area will be hit by no landslide.
(c) The number of flaws in bolts of cloth in a textile manufacturing company is assumed to be a Poisson
distribution with a mean of 0.2 flaws per square meter. What is the probability that there is one flow
in 20 square meters of cloth?
(d) Let X be a random variable with an exponential distribution with parameter λ. Work out
P (X > α + β|X > α)
given that α > 0, β > 0 and β > α.
9. (a) Assume that X is normally distributed with a mean of 5 and a standard deviation of 4. Determine:
i. the value of x such that P (x < X ≤ 9) = 0.2,
ii. P (X > 4),
iii. P (3 ≤ X ≤ 7.5).
(b) Suppose that X1 is binomially distributed with n = 10, p = 0.1 and X2 is binomially distributed with
n = 20, p = 0.3. Which of the two random variables would be better approximated by a Normal
distribution and why.
10. (a) Given that X is normally distributed with mean 25 and standard deviation 8. Calculate the
probability that the sample mean X̄ based on the sample of size 16 will:
i. exceed 31.
ii. lie between 23 and 29.
(b) If the standard error of the sample mean X̄ of sample with 36 items from a population is 2, how
large must the sample size be if the standard error is to be reduced to 1.2?
(c) Consider a population of size 4, consisting of values 2,4, 6 and 8. The four observations making up
the population are values of the random variable Y having the probability distribution f (y) = 41 for
y = 2, 4, 6, 8. Random samples of size 2 are drawn without replacement from this finite population.
i. Derive the distribution of the sample mean Ȳ ,
ii. Evaluate E(Ȳ ),
iii. Work out V ar(Ȳ )
iv. Find the population mean µ and population variance σ 2 .
v. Establish the relationship between V ar(Ȳ ) and σ 2 .
11. (a) A random sample of size 20 from a normal distribution has mean X̄ = 32.8 and a standard deviation
S = 4.51. Construct a 95% confidence interval for the population variance σ 2 .
(b) A random sample of 16 items with mean 75.5 is selected from a normally distributed population
whose standard deviation is 23.04. Determine a 95% confidence interval for the population mean.
What conclusion can you make from the computed confidence interval?
12. For a sample of 6 individuals, consider the following set of data:
x 27 22 15 35 30 52
y 30 26 25 42 38 40
(a) Determine the regression line of x on y.
(b) Compute the Pearson correlation coefficient.
(c) Comment on the relationship between x and y.
END