Questions to Help You Familiarize With Different Types of Probability Distributions & Using Excel

1. A company has a sales force of 20 people. If each salesperson has a 30% chance of making a
sale on any given call, what is the probability that at least 5 sales will be made on a given day?
2. A telecommunications network experiences an average of 2 network outages per day. What is
the probability that there are no network outages in a randomly selected day?
3. A university has a student population of 10,000. If 70% of the students are from in-state and
the rest are from out-of-state, how many students would you expect to be from out-of-state in
a random sample of 500?
4. A manufacturing plant produces light bulbs with a 2% defect rate. If a customer buys 100 light
bulbs, what is the probability that at least one is defective?
5. An engineering team is working on a project, and the probability of a component failing during
testing is 0.10. If they test 50 components, what is the probability that less than 5 components
fail?
6. A company's product has a weight that is normally distributed with a mean of 500 grams and a
standard deviation of 20 grams. What is the probability that a randomly selected product will
weigh less than 480 grams?
7. A call center receives an average of 10 calls per hour. What is the probability that the center
will receive 15 or more calls in a given hour?
8. A hospital has an average of 5 emergency room visits per hour. What is the probability that
there will be no more than 2 visits in a given 30-minute period?
9. A website has an average of 500 hits per day. What is the probability that the website will
receive 600 or more hits in a given day?
10. A student's test scores are normally distributed with a mean of 80 and a standard deviation of
10. What is the probability that the student will score above 90 on the next test?
11. The heights of a population of adults are normally distributed with a mean of 170 cm and a
standard deviation of 5 cm. What is the probability that a randomly selected adult will be taller
than 180 cm?