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20BS4101: PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS

UNIT-I: Probability Distributions
(2023-2024)

Problems on Binomial Distribution

1. The mean and variance of a binomial distribution are 4 and 4/3 respectively, find P(X>=1).
2. In 8 throws of a die 5 or 6 is considered as success. Find the mean number of success and the standard
deviation.
3. The mean and variance of a binomial variable X with parameters n and p are 16 and 8 respectively.
Find P(X>=1) and P(X>2).
4. 10 coins are thrown simultaneously, then find the probability of getting at least 7 heads.
5. In sampling a large number of parts manufactured by a machine. A mean number of defectives in a
sampling of 20 is 2, then for 1000 such samples how many would be expected to contain at least 3
defective parts.
6. The probability that a pen manufactured by a company will be defective will is 1/10. If such 12 pens
are manufactured, then find the probability that
(i) exactly 2 will be defective;
(ii) at least 2 will be defective;
(iii) None will be defective.
7. It has been claimed that in 60% of all solar-heat installations the utility bill is reduced by at least one-
third. Accordingly, what are the probabilities that the utility bill will be reduced by at least one-third in
(i) Four of five installations;
(ii) at least four of five installations?
8. A manufacturer of external hard drives claims that only 10% of his drives require repairs within the
warranty period of 12 months. If 5 of 20 of his drives required repairs within the first year, does this
tend to support or refute the claim?
9. If the probability is 0.05 that a certain wide-flange column will fail under a given axial load, what are
the probabilities that among 16 such columns
(i) at most two will fail;
(ii) at least four will fail?
10. The manufacture of large high-definition LCD panels is difficult, and a moderately high proportion has
too many defective pixels to pass inspection. If the probability is 0.3 that an LCD panel will not pass
inspection, what is the probability that 6 of 18 panels, randomly selected from production, will not pass
inspection?
11. If the probability is 0.20 that any one person will dislike the taste of a new tooth-paste, what is the
probability that 5 of 18 randomly selected persons will dislike it?
12. Find the mean of the probability distribution of the number of heads obtained in 3 flips of a balanced
coin.
13. The probability of a man hitting a target is 1/3. What is the probability of his hitting the target at least
once greater than 3/4.

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Problems on Poisson distribution

1. If X is a Poisson variate such that P(1) = P(2), find (i) mean of the distribution (ii) P(X=4) (iii) P(X>=1)
(iv) P(1<X<4).
2. If the variance of a Poisson variate is 3, then find (i) P(X=0) (ii) P(0<X<=3) (iii)P(1<=X<4)
3. If X is a Poisson variate such that 3P(X=4) =(1/2)P(X=2) + P(X=0), find the mean of X and P(X<=2).
4. Average number of accidents on any day on a national highway is 1.8. Determine the probability that
the numbers of accidents are (i) at least one, (ii) at most one.
5. In a certain factory 2% of the items produced are defective, the items are packed in boxes of 100 items.
What is the probability that there will be (i) 2 defective items (ii) at least 3 defective items and
(ii) 2<defective items<5.
6. A hospital switch board receives an average of 4 emergency calls in 10 min interval. Then what is the
probability that (i) there are at most 2 emergency calls; (ii) there are exactly 3 emergency calls.
7. It is known that 5% of the books bound at a certain bindery have defective bindings. Find the
probability that 2 of 100 books bound by this bindery will have defective binding using
(i) the formula for the binomial distribution;
(ii) the poisson approximation to the binomial distribution.
8. A heavy machinery manufacturer has 3,840 large generators in the field that are under warranty. If the
probability is 1/1,200 that any one will fail during the given year, find the probabilities that 0, 1 of the
generators will fail during the given year.
9. Over a 10-minute period, a counter records an average of 1.3 gamma particles per millisecond coming
from a radioactive substance. To a good approximation, the distribution of the count, X, of gamma
particles during the next millisecond is Poisson. Determine (i) Lamda, (ii) the probability of one or
more gamma particles, and (iii) the variance.
10. The number of weekly breakdowns of a computer is a random variable having a poisson distribution
with Lamda=0.2. What is the probability that te computer will operate without a break down for 3
consecutive weeks?
11. A consulting engineer receives, on average, 0.7 requests per week. If the number of requests follows a
poisson process, find the probability that
(i) In a given week, there will be at least 1 request;
(ii) In a given 4 week period there will be at least 3 requests.
12. In the inspection of tin plate produced by a continuous electrolytic process, 0.2 imperfections are
spotted on the average per minute. Find the probabilities of spotting
(i) one imperfection in 3 minutes;
(ii) at least two imperfections in 5 minutes;
(iii) at most one imperfection in 15 minutes.
13. If a bank receives on the Average Alpha = 6 [ NOTE: ALPHA is the average(mean) number of
successes per unit time] bad checks per day, what are the probabilities that it will receive
(i) 4 bad checks on any given day;
(ii) 10 bad checks over any 2 consecutive days?

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Problems on Calculating Probabilities using Normal Distribution:

1. Find the probabilities that a random variable having the standard normal distribution will take on a value
(i) between 0.87 and 1.28 ; (ii) -0.34 and 0.62 ; (iii) greater than 0.85; -0.65.
2. Find Z0.01 ; Z0.05. ; Z0.005 ; Z0.025
3. In a photographic process, the developing time of prints may be looked upon as a random variable
having the normal distribution with mean of 16.28 seconds and SD of 0.12 second. Find the probability
that it will take
(i) anywhere from 16.00 to 16.50 seconds to develop one of the prints;
ii) at least 16.20 seconds to develop one of the prints; (iii) at most 16.35 seconds to develop one of the
prints.
4. If the amount of cosmic radiation to which a person is exposed while flying by jet across the United
States is a random variable having the normal distribution with mean 4.35 mrem and S.D. 0.59 mrem,
find the probabilities that the amount of cosmic radiation to which a person will be exposed on such a
flight is (i) between 4.00 and 5.00 mrem ;(ii) at least 5.50 mrem.
5. A RV has a normal distribution with SD 10. Find it’s mean if the probability is 0.8212 that it will take
on a value less than 82.5. What is the probability that it will take on a value greater than 58.3?
6. A RV has a normal distribution with mean 62.4. Find it’s SD, if the probability is 0.20, that it will take
on a value greater than 79.2.
7. The time for a super glue to set can be treated as a random variable having a normal distribution with
mean 30 seconds. Find its SD if the probability is 0.20 that it will take on a value greater than 39.2
seconds.
8. The actual amount of instant coffee that a filling machine puts into “4-ounce” jars may be looked upon
as a random variable having a normal distribution with SD 0.04 ounces. If only 2% of the jars are to
contain less than 4 ounces, what should be the mean fill of these jars?
9. If a random variable has a normal distribution, what are the probabilities that it will take on a value
within (i) 1 SD of the mean; (ii) 2 SD of the mean; (iii) 3 SD of the mean; (iv) 4 SD of the mean.
10. If the masses of 300 students are normally distributed with mean 68 kgs, SD 3 kgs, then how many
number of students have masses (i) > 72 kgs ; (ii) <=64 kgs (iii) b/w 65 & 71 kgs.
11. The mean height of students in a class is 158 cms, SD is 20 cm. Find how many students lie between
150 cm & 170 cm, if there are 100 students in a class.

Problems on calculating the probabilities using normal approximation to binomial distribution

[Note: both np and n (1-p) are >15 & Z=(X-np)/√𝑛𝑝𝑞 ]
1. If 20% of the memory chips made in a certain plant are defective, what are the probabilities that in a lot
of 100 randomly chosen for inspection
(i) at most 15 will be defective ; (ii) exactly 15 will be defective.
2. If 62% of all clouds seeded with silver iodide show spectacular growth, what is the probability that
among 40 clouds seeded with silver iodide at most 20 will show spectacular growth.
3. If a random variable has the binomial distribution with n=30 and p=0.60, use the normal approximation
to determine the probabilities that it will take on (i) the value 14 i.e., exactly 14; (ii) a value less than
12.

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4. A safety engineer feels that 30% of all industrial accidents in her plant are caused by failure of
employees to follow instructions. If this figure is correct, find, approximately, the probability that
among 84 industrialized accidents in this plant anywhere from 20 to 30 (inclusive) will be due to failure
of employees to follow instructions.
5. In a referendum of 60% of voters in favor a random of 200 voters were selected then what is the
probability that in a sample (i) > 130 voters in favor; (ii) b/w 105 & 113 inclusive voted in favor; (iii)
120 voted in favor.
6. In a certain city, the number of power outages per month is a rv having distribution with mean 11.6 and
SD 3.3. If this distribution can be approximated closely with a normal distribution, what is the
probability that there will be at least 8 outages in any one month?

Problems on joint Distribution

1. For the bivariate probability distribution of (X,Y) given below, find P(X<=1), P(Y<=3),
P(X<=1,Y<=3), P(X<=1/Y<=3), P(Y<=3/X<=1) and P(X+Y<=4)
Y 1 2 3 4 5 6
X
0 0 0 1/32 2/32 2/32 3/32
1 1/16 1/16 1/8 1/8 1/8 1/8
2 1/32 1/32 1/64 1/64 0 1/64
2. Two scanners are needed for an experiment. Of the five available, two have electronic defects, another
one has a defect in the memory, and two are in good working order. Two units are selected at random.
(i) Find the joint probability distribution of 𝑋1 =the number with electronic defects, and 𝑋2 = the
number with a defect in the memory.
(ii) Find the probability of 0 or 1 total defects among the two selected.
(iii) Find the marginal probability distribution of 𝑋1
(iv) Find the conditional probability distribution of 𝑋1 given 𝑋2 = 0.
3. The joint density of two random variables is given by
−2𝑥1 −3𝑥2 for 𝑥1 >0,𝑥2 >0
𝑓(𝑥1 , 𝑥2 ) = {6𝑒
0 else where
Find the probability that
(i) The first r.v will take on a value between 1 and 2 and the second r.v will take on a value
between 2 and 3.
(ii) The first r.v will take on a value less than 2 and the second r.v will take on a value greater tahn
2.
(iii) Find joint cumulative distribution function of two r.v’s will take on a value less than 1.
(iv) Find the marginal density of 𝑥1
(v) Check whether the two r.v’s are independent.