Exercise 1

An urn contains 10 balls, 3 of which are white. You perform repeated

extractions from the urn, and after each extraction you place the ball back
into the urn.

a) What is the distribution of the random variable X that represents the

number of white balls extracted in 4 extractions?
b) If you perform 4000 extractions, how many white balls do you expect to
extract? What is the probability of obtaining more than 1250 white balls?

Answers:

X
(
b) ^P= n ≈ N p ,
p ( 1−p )
n )
=N (0.3 ,
0.21
4000
=0.0000525)

( ) ( )
^ 1250 0.3125−0.3 0.0125
P> ¿=P Z > =P Z > =1−F ( 1.73 )
P( 4000
√
p ( 1−p ) 0.00724
=√ 0.0000525
n
= 1-0.9573= 0.0472

Exercise 2

The waiting time for the attractions in a themed park is uniformly

distributed between 0 and 20 minutes. Considering a sample of 50 visitors
waiting at the attractions, which is the probability that less than 30 visitors
will have to wait between 5 and 15 minutes?

Answers:
Y has a binomial distribution function with parameters n = 50 and p= (15-
5)*(1/20) = 0.5.
Since np(1-p) > 9, we approximate the binomial distribution with a Normal
distribution function of parameters mean p=0.5 and variance
p ( 1−p ) 0.25
= =0.005.
n 50

^ X
(
P= ≈ N p ,
n
p ( 1−p )
n )
=N ( 0.5 ,0.005)

( )
^ 30 0.6−0.5
P< ¿=P Z< =P ( Z <1.41 ) =F ( 1.41 )=0.9207

√
P( 50 p ( 1− p )
=0.0707
n
Exercise 3

A fast-food chain collected the following information: 30% of the customers

who buy a meal ask for a take-away box. Considering a random sample of
500 customers who buy a meal:
a) What is the probability that less than 170 customers asked for a take-
away box?
b) What is the probability that the customers that asked for a take-away
box is between 160 and 180?

Answers:
a)

p ( 1− p ) 0.21
X≈ N ( p=0.3 , n
=
500
=0.00042)

( )
^ 170 0.34−0.3
P< ¿=P Z< =P ( Z <1.95 )=F ( 1.95 )=0.9744
P( 500

b)
√
p ( 1− p )
n
=0.0205

160 180
(
0.32−0.3 0.36−0.3
)
P( 500 < P^ < 500 ¿=P 0.0205 < Z < 0.0205 =P ( 0.98< Z<2.93 )=¿

F ( 2.93 ) −F ( 0.98 )=0.9982−0.8365=0.1617

Exercise 4

Workers of a big company make in average 4 overtime hours per month

with a standard deviation of 1.2 hours.
a) Calculate the probability that, choosing random sample of 40 workers,
the sample average of “overtime hours per month” is bigger than 4.5.
b) If we choose a sample of 200 workers, the probability of question a)
would increase, decrease or stay unchanged? Justify your answer.

Answers:
Exercise 5

A careful personnel manager is concerned with the time spent by the

employees at the coffee machine. In particular, he intends to take measures
if it results that this time is on average greater than 15 minutes per day.
However, the manager wants to avoid unnecessary interventions since this
would compromise his relationships with the personnel. The manager has
recorded an average daily time spent at the coffee machine of 15.6 minutes,
with a standard deviation of 4.3. She decides to extract a sample of 120
employees and record their time spent at the coffee machine.
a) Is it necessary to assume that the population has a Normal distribution?
(give a motivation to your answer)
b) What is the probability that the sample mean of “time spent at the coffee
machine by employees” is bigger than 15 minutes?

Answers:
a) It is not necessary to assume that the population distribution is normal
since the sample size is large. Therefore, by the central limit theorem,
even if the population is not normally distributed, the sample mean
would be approximately normal.

( )
2
4.3
b) X ≈ N 15.6 , =0.154
120

(
P ( X >15 ) =P Z >
15−15.6
0.39 )
=P ( Z >−1.54 )=F ( 1.54 )=0.9382

Exercise 6

The CEO of a big luxury goods company aims to estimate the average sales
realized by company’s sales agents. On the basis of historical data, it is
assumed that the population standard deviation of sales is 500 €.
Assuming that the CEO analyzes a random sample of 35 agents, calculate
the standard error of the sample mean.

Answers:
Exercise 7

The production manager of a large automobile factory believes that, due to

the obsolescence of some parts of the plant, the production process of a
specific kind of engine may have recently experienced important deviations
from its normal functioning, with the associated inefficiencies in the
production. Historically, the weight of that kind of engine follows a normal
distribution with mean 42 Kg and variance 0.12 Kg 2. To verify her
suspicion, a random sample of 30 engines is extracted from the production
line.
What is the value that has probability 0.01 of being exceeded by the sample
mean?
Answers:

Exercise 8

An Italian web site claims that 80% of all downloads consist of books by
foreign authors.
Consider a sample of 60 downloads. What is the probability that more than
85% of them consist of books by foreign authors?

Answers: