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Cumulative vs Non-Cumulative
There are (2) ways I’ve seen Binomial Distribution Problems be represented in
Six Sigma Exams:
Non-cumulative questions
Cumulative questions (with or without a chart)
The questions can either be about the actual equations and translating a word
problem into an actual solution. Or they can be about the necessary scenarios
when you would apply binomial probability – in other words, what MUST be
true to use it, or if an event is binomial, what can we infer about it’s properties.
This is just a fancy statistics term of single events taken on their own.
Cumulative Probability
Another fancy statistics term for multiple events. I like to remember that
Cumulative events literally accumulate multiple probabilities.
One thing to be aware of is that you can be asked to either manually calculate
a binomial cumulative probability question or you could be used to leverage a
chart.
With a coin toss there are only 2 possible outcomes; heads or tails. So you
should be on alert for using binomial.
binomial successes
Non-Cumulative Calculation Example 2: “Contains Exactly”
A manufacturing process creates 3.4% defective parts. A sample of 10 parts
from the production process is selected. What is the probability that the
sample contains exactly 3 defective parts?
As soon as you see the word defective, you should be alert to using the
Binomial equation. Since defect in this sense means that a part is in a binary
state, either functioning or defective, it meets our criteria.
binomial successes 2
binomial successes 3
Also, since you’re asked for ‘x or fewer’, you have to calculate the probability
of ALL POSSIBLE events.
In this example we must calculate the odds of EXACTLY one pass PLUS the
odds of EXACTLY no pass in the sample.
binomial successes 4
Cumulative Calculation Example: “More than”
Here you’d do the opposite of the “Fewer” example above and count the
probabilities above.
I find that a lot of these binomial questions can be made easier by taking
advantage of reducing the factorials by cancelling out terms before you plug
them into the calculator.
Just for sake of simplicity let’s say that you have 5! / 3! If you write that out by
hand it’s essentially (5*4*3*2*1 / 3*2*1).. Also, you can eliminate a lot of the
terms by recognizing this and rewriting 5! / 3! as 5*4.
https://www.statisticshowto.datasciencecentral.com/tables/binomial-
distribution-table/
http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~xander/fa12_471/
Binomial_Probabilities.pdf
Let’s assume that 20% of drivers on the road have NO car insurance. What is
the probability that more than 7 out of a sample of 15 people have no car
insurance?
Now, all we need to do is read the probability value where the p = 0.20 column
and also the (n = 15, x = 7) row intersect. What do you get?
So, the cumulative binomial probability table tells us that P(X ≤ 7) = 0.9958.
Therefore: P(X > 7) = 1 − 0.9958 = 0.0042
That is, the probability that more than 7 in a random sample of 15 would have
no car insurance is 0.0042
Probability distributions
Describe and interpret normal, binomial, and Poisson, chi square, Student’s t,
and also F distributions. (Apply)
https://internal.ncl.ac.uk/ask/numeracy-maths-statistics/statistics/
hypothesis-testing/hypothesis-testing-with-the-binomial-
distribution.html
https://www.real-statistics.com/binomial-and-related-distributions/
hypothesis-testing-binomial-distribution/