ELEMENTARY PROBABILITY

THEORY
WHAT IS PROBABILITY?
• Intuition
• Relative frequency
• Law of large numbers
• In the long run, as the sample size increases and increases, the relative frequencies of
outcomes get closer and closer to the theoretical (or actual) probability value.

• Equally likely outcomes

Probability of an event = (number of outcomes/ total number of
outcomes)
Example:
Human eye color is controlled by a single pair of genes (one from the father and one from the
mother) called genotype. Brown color, B, is dominant over blue eye color, l. Therefore, in genotype
Bl, consisting of one brown gene B, and one blue gene l, the brown gene dominates. A person with
a Bl genotype has brown eyes.

If both parents have brown eyes and have genotype Bl, what is the probability that their child will
have blue eyes? What is the probability the child will have brown eyes?
Example:
• Professor Gutierrez is making up a final exam for a course in literature of the Southwest. He wants
the last three questions to be of the true-false type. In order to guarantee that the answers do not
follow his favorite pattern, he lists all possible true-false combinations fro three questions on slips of
paper and then picks one at random from a hat.
• What is the probability that all three items will be false?
• What is the probability that exactly two items will be true?
COMPLEMENT OF AN EVENT
• The sum of all the probabilities assigned to outcomes in a
sample space must be 1.
p+q = 1 since the sum of probabilities of the outcomes must
be equal to one
q=1-p
For event A, the event not A is called the complement of A
To compute the probability of the complement of A, we use
P(not A) = 1 – P(A)
The important facts about probabilities are:

• The probability of an event A is denoted by P(A)

• The probability of any event is a number between 0 and 1. The closer to 1
the probability is, the more likely the event is
• The sum of the probabilities of outcomes in a sample space is 1.
• Probabilities can be assigned by using three methods: intuition, relative
frequencies, or the formula for equally likely outcomes
• The probability that an event occurs plus the probability that the same
event does not occur is 1.
SOME PROBABILITY RULES – COMPOUND
EVENTS
• Probability of A and B
• P(A and B)
• Independent Events
• If the first event does not have any effect on the probability of getting
the probability of the second event
• P(A and B) = P(A).P(B)
• Dependent Events
• If the events are dependent, then we must take into account the
changes in the probability of one event caused by the occurrence of the
other event
• P(A and B) = P(A).P(B, given A has occurred)
• P(A and B) = P(B).P(A, given B has occurred)
Examples:
• Suppose you are going to throw two fair dice. What is the probability of
getting 5 on each die?
• Compute the probability of drawing two aces from a well-shuffled deck of
52 cards if the first card is not replaced before the second card is drawn.
Example:
• A quality control procedure for testing Ready-Flash disposable cameras at random from each lot of
100 without replacing the first camera before drawing the second. If both are defective, the entire lot
is rejected. Find the probability that both cameras are defective if the lot contains 10 defective
cameras. Since we are drawing the cameras at random, assume that each camera in the lot has an
equal chance of being drawn.
• What is the probability of getting a defective camera on the first draw?
• The first camera drawn is not replaced, what is the probability of getting a defective camera on the
second draw if the first camera was defective?
• Compute for the probability of getting the first camera defective and the second camera defective.
PROBABILITY OF A OR B
• Find the probability of
• P(jack or king)
• P(king or diamond)

Mutually Exclusive events (disjoint)

events that cannot occur together
Example:
• The Cost Less Clothing Store carries seconds in slacks. If you buy a pair of slacks in your
regular waist size without trying them on, the probability that the waist will be too tight is
0.30 and the probability that it will be too loose is 0.10
• If you choose a pair of slacks at random in your regular waist size, what is the probability
that the waist will be too tight or too loose?
Trees and Counting Techniques
• Tree diagram
• Helps us display the outcomes of an experiment consisting of a series
of activities. The total number of outcomes corresponds to the total
number of final branches in the tree
Example:
• Jacqueline is in the nursing program and is required to take a course in psychology and
one in anatomy and physiology (A and P) next semester. She also wants to take Spanish
II. If there are four sections of psychology, two of A and P, and three of Spanish II, how
many different class schedules can Jacqueline choose from?
Example:
• Suppose there are five balls in an urn. They are identical except in color. Three of the
balls are red and two are blue. You are instructed to draw out one ball, note its color, and
set it aside. Then you are to draw out another ball and note its color. What are the
outcomes of the experiment? What is the probability of each outcome?
MULTIPLICATION RULE OF
COUNTING
• If there are n possible outcomes for event E1 and m possible
outcomes for event E2, then there are a total of n x m or nm
possible outcomes for the series of events E1 followed by E2
• The Night Hawk is the new car model produced by Limited Motors, Inc. It comes with a
choice of two body styles, three interior package options, and four different colors, as well
as the choice of automatic or standard transmission. Select-an-Auto Car Dealership
wants to carry one of each of the different types of Night Hawks? How many cars are
required?
• The Old Sage Inn offers a special dinner menu each night. There are two appetizers to
choose from, three main courses, and four desserts. A customer can select one item from
each category. How many different meals can be ordered from the special dinner menu?
Example:
• To open a combination lock, you turn the dial to the right and stop at a number; then you
turn it to the left and stop at a second number. Finally, you turn it back to the right and
stop at a third number. If you used the correct sequence of the numbers, the lock opens. If
the dial of the lock contains 10 numbers, 0 to 9, determine the number of different
combinations possible for the lock.
Factorial Notation
• For a counting number n,
• n! = n(n-1)(n-2).......
• 0! = 1
• 1! = 1
Example:
• Evaluate 3!
• How many different ways can three objects be arranged in
order? How many choices do you have for the first position? For
the second position? For the third position?
 COUNTING TECHNIQUES

PERMUTATIONS AND COMBINATIONS

PERMUTATION
• Permutation is the grouping of things whose
arrangement is important
Linear Permutation
• It is a permutation in a straight line
Example:
• How many permutation can be made from three distinct objects all
are taken at a time?
Example:
• In the game of Jai Alai, players are numbered from 1 to 10. The first player to
score 9 points will be the first placer and the next two highest scorers will be
declared 2nd and 3rd placers.
• Each bet must consist therefore of three numbers corresponding to the player
number of the 1st placer, 2nd placer, and the 3rd placer respectively. Neglecting the
possibility of not having a 2nd and 3rd placer, how many bets are possible?
Example:
• How many permutations can you make out of the letters of the word
PADILLA if all letters are taken at a time?
CIRCULAR PERMUTATION
Example
• In how many ways can you sit in a three couple circular table of 6
seats if one occupies a particular position?
Example:
• In how many ways can you arrange 6 chairs in a circular position if 2
of which are identical?
Example
• How many circular permutations of 4 objects can you make out of 6
different objects?
PERMUTATION BY GROUP
Example:
• In how many ways can you line-up 4 marines and 6 army soldiers if all
the marines must be side by side with each other and the army
soldiers are likewise?
• In the last problem, what if all the marines must be together while
the army soldiers need not be necessarily together, how many ways
are possible?
COMBINATION OR SELECTION
• It is the grouping of things whose arrangement is not important.
Example
• How many number combinations are there in Lotto 6/49? (Note that
each combination consists of 6 different numbers selected from 1 to
49 wherein the arrangement is not important)
• A semiconductor company will hire 7 men and 4 women. In how
many ways can the company choose from 9 men and 6 women who
qualified for the positions?
• In how many ways can you fill a box with book(s) if you can choose
from 6 different books?
• In a city, the bus route numbers consist of a natural number less than
100, followed by one of the letters A, B, C, D, E and F. How many
different bus routes are possible?
• There are 3 questions in a question paper. If the questions have 4,3
and 2 solutions respectively, find the total number of solutions.
• In how many ways can the letters of the word LEADING be arranged
in such a way that the vowels always come together
• In how many ways can 4 girls and 5 boys be arranged in a row so that
all the girls are together?
• In a box, there are 5 black pens, 3 white pens and 4 red pens. In how
many ways can 2 black pens, 2 white pens and 2 red pens can be
chosen?
• A question paper consists of 10 questions divided into two parts A and B. Each
part contains five questions. A candidate is required to attempt six questions in all
of which at least 2 should be from part A and at least 2 from part B. In how many
ways can the candidate select the questions if he can answer all questions equally
well?
• A committee of 5 persons is to be formed from 6 men and 4 women. In how
many ways can this be done when:
(i) At least 2 women are included?
(ii) At most 2 women are included?
• The Indian Cricket team consists of 16 players. It includes 2 wicket keepers and 5
bowlers. In how many ways can a cricket eleven be selected if we have to select 1
wicket keeper and at least 4 bowlers?
THE BINOMIAL PROBABILITY
DISTRIBUTION AND RELATED
TOPICS
INTRODUCTION TO RANDOM VARIABLES AND
PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTIONS
• Discrete random variable
• When the observations of a quantitative random variable can take only
a finite number of values or a countable number of values, we say that
the variable is discrete random variable
• Continuous random variable
• When the observations of a quantitative random variable can take on
any of the countless number of values in a line interval, we say that the
variable is a continuous random variable
• Probability Distributions
• A random variable has a probability distribution whether it is discrete or
continuous. The probability distribution is simply an assignment of
probabilities to the specific values of the random variable
• The probability distribution of a discrete random variable has a
probability assigned to each value of the random variable.
• The sum of these probabilities must be 1.
Example
• One of the elementary tools of cryptanalysis (the science of code breaking)
is to use relative frequencies of occurrence of different letters in the
alphabet to break standard English alphabet codes. Large samples of
plain text such as newspaper stories generally yield about the same
relative frequencies for letters. A sample 1000 letters long yielded the
information in the table.

• If a letter is selected at random from a newspaper story, what is the

probability that the letter will be a vowel?
Frequency of letters in a 1000-letter
sample
LETTER FREQ PROB LETTER FREQ PROB
A 73 0.073 N 78 0.078
B 9 0.009 O 74 0.074
C 30 0.030 P 27 0.027
D 44 0.044 Q 3 0.003
E 130 0.130 R 77 0.077
F 28 0.028 S 63 0.063
G 16 0.016 T 93 0.093
H 35 0.035 U 27 0.027
I 74 0.074 V 13 0.013
J 2 0.002 W 16 0.016
K 3 0.003 X 5 0.005
L 35 0.035 Y 19 0.019
M 25 0.035 Z 1 0.001
MEAN AND STANDARD DEVIATION OF A
DISCRETE PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTION
• The mean and standard deviation of a discrete probability
distribution are found by using these formulas:
• Mean μ= ΣxP(x)
• Standard Deviation

• where x is the value of a random variable

• P(x) is the probability of that variable, the sum Σ is taken for all
the values of the random variable
EXPECTED VALUE
• The mean of a probability distribution is often called the
expected value of the distribution.
• This terminology reflects the idea that the mean represents a
“central point” or “cluster point” for the entire distribution.
Example:
• Are we influenced to buy a product because we saw an ad on
TV? National Infomercial Marketing Association determined the
number of times buyers of a product watched a TV infomercial
before purchasing the product. The results are as follows:
Number of times buyers 1 2 3 4 5
saw Infomercial
Percentage of Buyers 27% 31 18 9% 15
% % %

• Compute the mean and standard deviation of the distribution.

Example
• At a carnival you pay $2.00 to play a coin flipping game with three fair
coins. On each coin one side has a number 0 and the other side has the
number 1. You flip the three coins at one time and you win $1.00 for every
1 that appears on top. Are your expected earnings equal to the cost to
play?
BINOMIAL PROBABILITIES
• When a problem is characterized by the feature there are
exactly two possible outcomes for each trial of interest it is
called binomial experiment or Bernoulli experiments
• Features of a Binomial Experiment
• There are a fixed number of trials. We denote this by the letter n
• The n trials are independent and repeated under identical conditions.
• Each trial has only two outcomes: success, denoted by S, and failure,
denoted by F.
• For each individual trial, the probability of success is the same. We
denote the probability of success by p and that of failure q. Since each
trial results in either success or failure, p+q = 1 and q = 1 – p
• The central problem of a binomial experiment is to find the probability
of r successes out of n trials
FORMULA FOR THE BINOMIAL PROBABILITY
DISTRIBUTION
Example
• Privacy is a concern for many users of the Internet. One survey showed
that 59% of the internet users are somewhat concerned about the
confidentiality of their E-mail. Based on this information, what is the
probability that for a random sample of 10 Internet users, 6 are concerned
about the privacy of their E-mail?
Example
• A biologist is studying a new hybrid tomato. It is known that the seeds of
this hybrid tomato have probability 0.70 of germinating. The biologist
plants 10 seeds.
• What is the probability that exactly 8 seeds will germinate?
• What is the probability that at least 8 seeds will germinate?
• The probability that Kyla will score above a 90 on a mathematics test
is 4/5. What is the probability that she will score above a 90 on
exactly three of the four test this quarter?
• Hospital records show that of patients suffering from a certain
disease, 75% die of it. What is the probability that of 6 randomly
selected patients, 4 will recover?
• In the old days, there was a probability of 0.8 of success in any
attempt to make a telephone call. (This often depended on the
importance of the person making the call, or the operator's curiosity!)
• Calculate the probability of having 7 successes in 10 attempts.
• A manufacturer of metal pistons finds that on the average, 12% of his
pistons are rejected because they are either oversize or undersize.
What is the probability that a batch of 10 pistons will contain
• no more than 2 rejects?
• at least 2 rejects?
• After studying a couple’s family history, a doctor determines that the
probability of any child born to this couple having a gene for disease X
is 1 out of 4. If the couple has three children, what is the probability
that exactly two of the children have the gene for disease X?
• On any given day, the probability that the entire Watson family eats
dinner together is 2/5. Find the probability that, during any 7-day
period, the Watson’s eat dinner together at least 6 times.
MEAN AND STANDARD DEVIATION OF
BINOMIAL PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTIONS
µ = np

• Where n is the number of trials,

• p is the probability of success
• q is the probability of failure
THE GEOMETRIC AND POISSON
DISTRIBUTION
• Geometric Probability Distribution

• Where n is the number of the trial on which the first success

occurs (n=1,2,3,....) and p is the probability of success on each
trial
Example
• An automobile assembly plant produces sheet metal door panels. Each
panel moves on an assembly line. As the panel passes a robot, a
mechanical arm will perform spot welding at different locations. Each
location has a magnetic dot painted where the weld is to be made. The
robot is programmed to locate the magnetic dot and perform the weld.
However, experience shows that on each trial the robot is only 85%
successful at locating the dot. If it cannot locate the magnetic dot, it is
programmed to try again. The robot will keep on trying until it finds the dot
and does the weld or the panel door passes out of the robot’s reach.
• What is the probability that the robot’s first success will be on attempts n =
1,2 or 3?
• The assembly line moves so fast that the robot only has a maximum of
three chances before the door panel is out of reach. What is the probability
that the robot will be successful before the door panel is out of reach?
• What is the probability that the robot will not be able to locate the correct
spot within three tries? If 10,000 panels are made, what is the expected
number of defectives?
Example
• Susan is taking Western Civilization this semester on a pass/ fail basis.
The department teaching the course has a history of passing 77% of
the students in Western Civilization each term. Let n = 1,2,3…..
represent the number of times a student takes Western Civilization
until the first passing grade is received. (Assume trials are
independent)
• What is the probability that Susan passes on the first try? On the second try?
• What is the probability that Susan needs three or more tries to pass Western
Civilization?
POISSON DISTRIBUTION
• Let λ be the mean number of success over time, volume,
area and so forth. Let r be the number of success (r =
0,1,2,3,....) in a corresponding interval of time, volume,
area, and so forth. Then the probability of r success in the
interval is

• Where e is approximately equal to 2.7183

Example
• Pyramid Lake is located in Nevada on the Paiute Indian
Reservation. The lake is described as a lovely jewel in a
beautiful desert setting. In addition to its natural beauty, the lake
contains some of the world’s largest cutthroat trout. Eight-to-ten
pound trout are not uncommon and 12 to 15 – pound trophies
are taken each season. The Paiute Nation uses highly trained
fish biologists to study and maintain this famous fishery. In one
of their publications, the Creel Chronicle (Vol. 3, No.2), the
following information was given about the November catch for
boat fishermen.
• Total fish per hour = 0.667
• Suppose that you decide to fish Pyramid Lake for 7 hours
during the month of November.
• Find the probability distribution for r the number of fish (all
sizes) you catch in a period of 7 hours
• What is the probability that in 7 hours you will get 0,1,2 or 3 fish
of any size?
• What is the probability that you will get 4 or more fish in the 7-
hour fishing period?
Example
• The average number of homes sold by the Acme Realty company is 2
homes per day. What is the probability that exactly 3 homes will be
sold tomorrow?
Example
• A life insurance salesman sells on the 3 life insurance policies per
week. Use Poisson's law to calculate the probability that in a given
week he will sell
• Some policies
• 2 or more policies but less than 5 policies.
• Assuming that there are 5 working days per week, what is the probability that
in a given day he will sell one policy?
THE HYPERGEOMETRIC DISTRIBUTION
• The probability that an n-trial hypergeometric experiment results in
exactly r successes, when the population consists of N items, M of
which are classified as successes.

Hypergeometric Formula. Suppose a population consists

of N items, M of which are successes. And a random sample drawn
from that population consists of n items, r of which are successes.
MEAN AND VARIANCE OF HYPERGEOMETRIC
PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTION
Example
• A batch of 10 rocker cover gaskets contains 4 defective gaskets. If we
draw sample size of 3 without replacement, from the batch of 10,
find the probability that a sample contains 2 defective gaskets?
Example
• In the manufacture of car tires, a particular production process is
known to yield 10 tires with defective walls in every batch of 100 tires
produced. From a production batch of 100 tires, a sample of 4 is
selected for testing to destruction. Find:
• The probability that the sample contains 1 defective tire
• The expectation of the number of defectives
• The variance of the number of defectives
Example
• A deck of cards contains 20 cards: 6 red cards and 14 black cards. 5
cards are drawn randomly without replacement. What is the
probability that exactly 4 red cards are drawn?
Example
• Suppose a researcher goes to a small college of 200 faculty, 12 of which have
blood type O-negative. She obtains a simple random sample of 10 of the faculty.
Let the random variable X represent the number of faculty in the sample of size
that have blood type O-negative.
• What is the probability that 3 of the faculty have blood type O-negative?