Practice for the midterm

Instructions: Show all of your work. Do not evaluate binomial symbols, powers, sums, etc. to give the result as a decimal number and do not waste time simplifying complicated expressions. Show all your work. 1. 10 fair dice are thrown. What is the expected sum? Answer. 35. 2. At a dinner party, each of 10 guests checks in her or her hat. They are returned at random. What is the expected number of guests that receive their own hat back? Answer. 1. 3. A box contains 3 blue marbles and 3 red marbles. You select two at random. If they are the same color, you win 2 dollars. Otherwise you lose one dollar. Let X be your winnings. Calculate E[X ] and V ar(X ). 9 . Answer. E[X ] = 2 3+3 (6 ) (6 2 2) V ar(X ) = E[X ] E[X ] = 4
2 2

3+3
6 2

9
6 2

3+3
6 2

9
6 2

4. An ordinary deck of card is well-shued and then the cards are drawn one at a time until the rst ace appears. What is the expected number of cards drawn? 5. Exactly one of 6 similar keys opens a door. If you try the keys one after the other, what is the expected number of keys you will have to try before success? If X is the number of keys before success, compute V ar(X ) too.
1 ( Answer. E[X ] = 3.5, V ar(X ) = 6 6 2 i=1 i )

(3.5)2 .

6. Consider the following game. You ip 4 fair coins. If exactly two heads occur then you win $9. If the number of heads is either 1 or 3 then you lose $6. In all other cases, you neither win nor lose any money. Determine your expected earnings. 7. You are dealt one card at random from a full deck, and your opponent is dealt 2 cards (without any replacement). If you get an Ace, he pays you $10. If you get a King, he pays you $5 (regardless of his cards). If you have neither an Ace nor a King. but your card is red and your opponent has no red cards, he pays you $1. In all other cases, you pay him $1. Determine your expected earnings. 8. There are 3 families with 2, 5, and 8 children respectively. If a child is selected at random (from among all 15 children), and X denotes the number of siblings of the child, nd E[X ] and Var(X ).

2 9. Alice is on a game show. She has the option of choosing question A or question B. If she answers correctly, then she can try the other question. If she answers incorrectly then the game is over. She is 30% certain that she can answer question A correctly and 50% certain that she can answer question B correctly. If she answers question A then she wins $100. If she answers question B she wins $60. Which question should she try rst? Calculate her expected winnings in each case. 10. Roll 2 dice. Let X be the product of the two numbers. Compute the distribution of X .
2 1 , P (X = 2) = 36 , P (X = 3) = Answer. P (X = 1) = 36 Theres no simple formula for this as far as Im aware. 2 , P (X 36

= 4) =

3 , 36

etc.

11. 30 students arrive on bus #1, 40 students arrive on bus #2 and 50 students arrive on bus #3. A student is selected at random. Let X be the number of students on the same bus as the selected student. Compute the expected value and variance of X .
40 50 30 + 40 120 + 50 120 . Answer. E[X ] = 30 120

V ar(X ) = 302

40 50 30 40 50 30 + 402 + 502 30 + 40 + 50 120 120 120 120 120 120

12. There are 10 science professors, 20 math professors and 30 engineering professors that are supposed to attend a meeting. Each science professor skips the meeting with probability 0.3, each math professor skips with probability 0.4 and each engineering professor skips with probability 0.5. What is the expected number of professors that skip the meeting? 13. Consider the following game. You ip 4 fair coins. If exactly two heads occur then you win $9. If the number of heads is either 1 or 3 then you lose $6. In all other cases, you neither win nor lose any money. Determine your expected earnings. 14. What is the coecient on x4 y 6 in the product (2x + 3y )10 ? Answer.
10 4

24 36 .

15. What is the coecient on x3 y 6 in the product (3x + 2y )9 ? 16. A new treatment of a certain disease has a success rate of 0.6. What is the probability that out of 12 randomly selected people who suer from the disease, at least 10 will be cured? Answer.
12 12 k=10 k

(0.6)k (0.4)12k .

3 17. Use a Poisson random variable to approximate the probability that in a group of 500 people, at least one will have been born on Christmas day? Answer. Let X be the number of people that were born on Christmas day. X is approximately Poisson with parameter = 500/365. So the answer is 1 e500/365 . 18. Suppose that earthquakes in California occur on the average of 3 per month. Whats the probability that in the next month exactly 2 earthquakes will occur? Answer. We assume that the number is a Poisson random variable with parameter 3. So the answer is 32 e3 . 2! 19. Suppose the monthly worldwide average number of commercial airplane crashes is 3.5. (a) If there are 10000 monthly ights, each ight having the same probability of crashing independently of other ights, then what is the probability that there will be at least 2 crashes in a given month? 10000 Answer. 1 1 (3.5/10000)k (1 3.5/10000)10000k . k=0 k (b) Suppose that the number of monthly ights is very large. Find a good approximation using a Poisson random variable for the probability that there will be at least 2 crashes in a given month. Answer. 1 e3.5 (1 + 3.5) . 20. A certain group of 20 people consists of 7 doctors, 3 lawyers and 10 bankers. They are all seated at random around a round table. (a) What is the probability that the 3 lawyers sit next to each other? Answer. 17!3! 19! (b) What is the probability that no doctor sits next to another doctor? 12!7!(13) Answer. 19! 7 . 21. Urn #1 contains 3 black and 4 red balls. Urn #2 contains 5 black and 2 red balls. A ball is chosen at random from urn #1. A ball is also chosen at random from urn #2. Whats the probability the two balls have the same color? 22. How many anagrams of MISSISSIPPI are there? Answer.
11 1,4,4,2

4 23. Six dice are rolled. What is the probability that each of the six faces appears? Answer. 6!/66 . 24. There are 3 defective items in batch of 100 items. Quality control professionals select 10 items at random. What is the probability that they will select at least one defective item? (97 10) . Answer. 1 100 ( 10 ) 25. In a bridge game, each of 4 players gets 13 cards drawn at random from an ordinary deck of 52 cards. What is the probability that two players each have 2 aces? There are 4 aces in the deck. 26. Suppose that 30 lawn mowers, of which seven have defects, are sold to a hardware store. If the store manager inspects six of the lawn mowers randomly, what is the probability that he nds at least one defective lawn mower? 27. There are 6 women and 4 men in a club. In how many ways can a president, vice president and secretary be chosen if at least 1 woman and at least 1 man must be selected for a position? Answer.
10! 7!

6! 3!

4! . 1!

28. A school play has 4 distinct male roles and 5 distinct female roles. If 7 men and 8 women audition for the play, how many possible casts are there? What if Bob and Alice refuse to be in the play together? Answer. question 1:
7! 8! . 3! 3!

Question 2:

7! 8! 3! 3!

46! 7! 3! 2!

6! 57! . 2! 3!

29. How may 10 digit numbers are there that contain four 0s, three 1s and three 2s? 30. In tossing 4 fair dice, whats the probability of tossing at most one 3? 31. In a certain city, 50% of the people speak Spanish, 45% speak English, 40% speak French, 15% speak Spanish and English, 15% speak English and French, 10% speak Spanish and French. If everyone speaks at least one of these three languages then what percentage of people speak all three?