2018 Term I

STAT2001 Midterm Examination

Instructions: It is a 1.5-hour Exam. Do all 6 questions. Show your steps clearly.

Give the best answer to each question.

Question 1:

Suppose that in a hospital, number of babies born follows a Poisson process with a rate of 10
births per day.

(a) (6 marks) What is the probability that at most 3 babies are born during the next 4 hours?
(b) (6 marks) What is the expected number of births for a period of 5 days?

Question 2:

(a) (6 marks) Consider three events E, F and G. Events E and F are independent. Events E
and G are independent. Events F and G are mutually exclusive. Show that events E and
F ∪ G are independent.
(b) (6 marks) Consider 3 urns. Urn A contains 2 white balls and 4 red balls; urn B contains 8
white balls and 4 red balls; and urn C contains 1 white ball and 3 red balls. One ball is
randomly selected from each urn. If 2 white balls and 1 red ball were selected, what is
the probability that the ball selected from urn A was white?
(c) (6 marks) If 12 people are to be divided into 3 committees of respective sizes 3, 4 and 5,
how many divisions are possible?

Question 3:

(a) (6 marks) The moment generating function of a discrete random variable X is:
0.7et
M (t ) = , t < − ln(0.3).
1 − 0.3et
Let µ and σ be the mean and standard deviation of X respectively. Find
P( µ − σ < X < µ + σ ) .
(b) (6 marks) A box contains 5 red marbles, 5 white marbles and 5 blue marbles. Two
marbles are randomly selected without replacement from the box. If they are of the same
color, you win $3. If they are of different colors, you win -$1 (i.e. you lose $1).
Calculate the variance of the amount you win.

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Question 4:

(a) (6 marks) If X is a Binomial random variable with expected value 6 and variance 2.4, find
P(X=5).
(b) (6 marks) Consider a biased coin that when flipped comes up heads with probability 0.6.
The coin is flipped until either heads or tails has occurred twice. Find the expected
number of flips.

Question 5:

A continuous random variable X has the following probability density function:

(
c 2 x + x 3
f ( x) = 
) , for 0 < x < 1
 0 , otherwise

(a) (6 marks) Find the constant c.

(b) (6 marks) Find P(-1< X ≤ 0.1).
(c) (6 marks) Find the median of the distribution of X.
(d) (6 marks) Find the mean of X.

Question 6:

Consider a continuous random variable X having the following probability density function:

c exp(− x + 2 ) , for − ∞ < x < ∞

f ( x) = 
 0 , otherwise

Remark: a denotes the absolute value of a .

(a) (6 marks) Find the constant c.

(b) (10 marks) Find the moment generating function of X.
(c) (6 marks) Find the mean of X.

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