Practice Questions - Probability 1. A box has 20 screws, three of which are known to be defective.

What is the probability that the first two screws taken out of the box are both defective?

2. The probability of stock A rising is 0.3; and of stock B rising is 0.4. What is the probability that neither of the stocks rise, assuming that these two stocks are independent? 3. The probability of stock A rising is 0.3; and of stock B is 0.4. If stocks A and B are not independent, and the probability of both stocks rising is 0.09, what is the probability that neither stock rises?

4. A bag has five pearls in it, out of which one is artificial. If three pearls are taken out at random, what is the probability that the artificial pearl is one of them? 5. Suppose that two events A and B are mutually exclusive. We know that the probability of A is 0.4 and the probability of B is 0.2. The probability that either A or B (or both) will occur is: 6. If the probability of A is 0.45 and the probability of the intersection of A and B is 0.15, then the probability that B will occur given that A has occurred is:

7. If P(A) = 0.2; P(B) = 0.6; and A and B are independent events, then the P(A U B) is: 8. If the probability of A is 0.5 and the probability of B is 0.2 and the probability of the union of A and B is 0.7, then: 9. I shoot at a target five times and each time my probability of hitting is 0.40. Assuming that each shot is independent, my probability of hitting the target at least once is: 10. The probability that I get job A is 0.45; the probability that I get job B is 0.60; and the probability that I get both the jobs is 0.30. The probability that I get at least one job offer is: 11. The probability that event A will occur is 0.7 and the probability that event

B will occur is 0.7, and the probability that both events will occur is 0.49. The two events are: 12. Five of the 12 members of the board of directors of Giganticus, Inc., will be placed on a subcommittee that will decide if John Goodhair, Chairman and CEO, will remain in his position. How many subcommittees are possible if members are randomly chosen?

Practice Questions Random variables 1. When two fair six-sided die are tossed, what is the expected value of the sum of the faces? 2. When two fair six-sided die are tossed, what is the probability of getting a sum greater than 6?

3. Twenty-five percent of all households in a town have broadband Internet access. In a random sample of fifteen houses, what is the probability that exactly five have broadband Internet access?

4. A fair coin is tossed five times. What is the probability that it lands tails up at least once? 5. In a uniform distribution, [1, 9], what is the probability that x will be greater than zero? 6. What is the probability that at least two cars will cross a given intersection in the next half hour, if crossings are poisson-distributed with an average of four cars per half-hour? 7. The daily temperature in Kodiak, Alaska has a uniform distribution with a range from -20 degrees to +10 degrees.

What is the probability that the temperature is at least 5 degrees on any given day?

8. From a group of six men and four women, a committee of four is to be chosen. What is the probability that this committee consists of exactly two men and two women? 9. Given the following probability distribution

The variance of the random variable is:

10. The probability that no typing errors will occur on a page is 0.05. The probability that one error will occur is 0.1; the probability of 2 errors is 0.1; 3 errors is 0.2; 4 errors is 0.2; 5 errors is 0.3; and the probability of 6 errors is 0.05. The average number of errors per page is: 11. A thoroughbred horse-racing facility has opened a drive-through wagering booth. Research has shown that the number of visitors to this booth will be Poisson-distributed an average arrival rate of 3 customers per hour. If a customer has just left this booth, what is the probability that one-half hour will elapse before the next customer's arrival?

Practice questions - The Normal Distribution 1. Find P(-0.5 < Z < 0.5).

2. Find the probability that a standard normal random variable has a value greater than -1.56. 3. Let X be a normally distributed random variable with mean 100 and standard deviation 20. Find two values, a and b, symmetric about the mean, such that the probability of the random variable being between them is 0.99.

4. A spark plug manufacturer believes that his plug lasts an average of 30,000 miles, with a standard deviation of 2,500 miles. What is the probability that a given spark plug of this type will last 37,500 miles before replacement? 5. The contents of a particular bottle of shampoo marked as 150 ml are found to be 153 ml at an average, with a standard deviation of 2.5 ml. What proportion of shampoo bottles contain less than the marked quantity? Assume a normal distribution. 6. A grocery store has a mean accounts receivable of $264, with a standard deviation of $55. The accounts receivable are normally distributed.

What proportion of all accounts will be greater than $275? 7. A grocery store has a mean accounts receivable of $264, with a standard deviation of $55. The accounts receivable are approximately normally distributed. Find the value such that 45% of all the accounts exceed this value. That is, find x such that: P(X > x) = 0.45.

8. The IQs of the employees of a company are normally distributed, with a mean of 127 and a standard deviation of 11. What is the probability that the IQ of an employee selected at random will be between 120 and 130?

9. The GMAT scores of students in a college are normally distributed with a mean of 520 and a standard deviation of 41. What proportion of students have a score higher than 600? 10. A normal random variable has a distribution that is: A. always symmetric B. never symmetric C. sometimes symmetric D. symmetric if the mean is positive E. symmetric if the variance is negative

11. What is the probability that a normal random variable with mean 15 and standard deviation 5 will have a value of exactly 25? 12. If X is a normal random variable with mean 15 and standard deviation 10, then the probability that X will have a negative value is: