Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

6.008 Introduction to Inference
Fall 2015
Problem Set 1
Issued: Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Due: Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Required Reading: Course notes Chapter 1 Introduction and Preliminaries

Additional Reading: Chapter 1 of Bertsekas and Tsitsiklis
Problem 1.1
Let A and B be independent events in a discrete sample space , and let Ac := \ A
and Bc := \ B be the respective complementary events. Indicate whether each
of the following statements is true or false. If the statement is true, then provide a
proof. If the statement is false, then provide a counterexample.
(a) A and Ac must be independent.
(b) Ac and Bc must be independent.
Hint: De Morgans law.
(c) It could be that A = B.
(d) and must be independent.
Problem 1.2
Let events A1 , A2 , . . . , An be mutually independent events in a discrete sample space.
(a) Show that A1 A2 is independent of A3 .
(b) In this problem, we show by induction that
P (A1 A2 An ) = 1

n
Y
(1 P (Ai )).

(1)

i=1

(i) Show that Equation (1) is true for n = 2.

Hint: Use the result of Problem 1.1(a).
(ii) Suppose that Equation (1) holds for n = j for some integer j 2. Show
that Equation (1) then also holds for n = j + 1.
Hint: Part (a) implies that A1 A2 Aj and Aj+1 are independent.

Problem 1.3
Events A1 and A2 are said to be mutually exclusive if A2 can occur if, and only if,
A1 does not occur. If A1 and A2 are mutually exclusive, under what conditions are
they also independent?
Problem 1.4
Show that for any three events A, B and C we have:
P (A B C) P (A) + P (B) + P (C) 2.

Problem 1.5
Alice has five coins in a bag: two coins are normal, two are double-headed, and the
last one is double-tailed. She reaches into the bag and randomly pulls out a coin.
Without looking at the coin she drew, she tosses it.
(a) What is the probability that once the coin lands, the side of the coin that is
face-down is heads?
(b) The coin lands and shows heads face-up. What is the probability that the
face-down side is heads?
(c) Alice discards the coin from parts (a) and (b), reaches again into the bag and
draws out a random coin. Again, without looking at it, she tosses it. What is
the probability that the coin shows heads face-up?
Problem 1.6
An MIT grad student gets a parking ticket 14 times for illegal parking on campus,
noting that the tickets were only issued on Mondays or Wednesdays.
(a) Assuming the grad student to park on any day of the week with equal probability
(the grad student diligently works weekends) and an equal chance of being issued
a parking ticket for illegal parking on any day of the week, what is the probability
that the 14 parking tickets were all given on Mondays or Wednesdays? Assume
that each ticket is issued independently from all the others.
(b) How would your answer to (a) change if the parking enforcement officer only
checked for illegally parked cars on weekdays? How about if the officer only
checked on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays?

Practice Problems:
Problem 1.7
In the following problem we will say that event A attracts event B if P (B|A) > P (B),
and repels B if P (B|A) < P (B).
(a) Prove that A attracts B if and only if B attracts A. Hence we can say that A
and B are mutually attractive if A attracts B.
(b) Prove that A and B are mutually attractive if and only if P (B|A) > P (B|Ac ).
(c) Prove that if A attracts both B and C, and A repels B C, then A attracts
B C.