Practice for Homework 2

Questions
/10 1. In a certain firm (from homework #1), 70% of employees know C/C++, 60% know Fortran,
and 50% know both languages.

a) If an employee knows C/C++, what is the probability that she also knows Fortran?

b) If an employee knows Fortran, what is the probability that she also knows C/C++?

c) If an employee knows at least one of these languages, what is the probability that she
knows both of them?

d) Are the events knows C/C++ and knows Fortran independent?

/10 2. Sec 1.9 (page 25), #1

Consider four computer firms, A, B, C, D, bidding for a certain contract. A survey of past
bidding success of these firms on similar contracts shows the following probabilities of win-
ning:
P (A) = 0.35, P (B) = 0.15, P (C) = 0.3, P (D) = 0.2.
Before the decision is made to award the contract, firm B withdraws its bid. Find the new
probabilities of A, C, D winning the bid.

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/10 3. Sec 1.11 (page 44), #3
A lot of components contains 0.6% defectives. Each component is subjected to a test that
correctly identifies a defective, but about 2 in every 100 good components are also indicated
defective. Given a randomly chosen component is declared defective by the tester, compute
the probability that it is actually defective.

/10 4. Sec 1.11 (page 44), #6

Of all the graduate students in a university, 70% are women and 30% are men. Suppose
20% and 25% of the female and male population, respectively, smoke cigarettes. What is the
probability that a randomly selected graduate student is:

a) a woman who smokes?

b) a man who smokes?

c) a smoker?

/10 5. An on-line computer system has four incoming communication lines with the properties
described in the table below. What is the probability that a randomly chosen message has
been received without error?

Line Fraction of traffic Fraction of messages without error

1 0.4 0.998
2 0.3 0.999
3 0.1 0.997
4 0.2 0.992

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/10 6. A power network involves three substations, A, B, and C. Overloads at any of these substa-
tions might result in a blackout of the entire network. Past history shows that if a substation A
alone experiences an overload, then there is a 2% chance of a network blackout. For stations
B and C alone these percentages are 3% and 2%, respectively. Overloads at two or more
substations simultaneously result in a blackout 8% of the time. During a heat wave there is a
60% chance that substation A alone will experience an overload. For stations B and C these
percentages are 20% and 15%, respectively. There is a 5% chance of an overload at two or
more substations. During a particular heat wave a blackout due to an overload occurred. Find
the probability that the overload occurred at:

a) substation A alone;

b) substation B alone;

c) substation C alone;

d) two or more substations simultaneously.

/10 7. A certain article is inspected by two inspectors. When a defective article comes through, the
first inspector detects it with probability 0.3 and throws away. Of those that get past the first
inspector, the second inspector will detect 6 out of 10, on the average.

a) What fraction of defective articles are stopped by either the first, or the second inspec-
tor?

b) If a defective is stopped, what is the probability that it was stopped by the first inspec-
tor?

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/10 8. A production line has an automatic scanner to detect defects. In recent production, 10%
of items have been defective. Every defective item is identified correctly as defective with
the probability 90%. Every nondefective item is identified correctly as nondefective with the
probability 80%.

a) What percent of all the items are classified correctly by the scanner?

b) If the scanner identifies an item as defective, what is the probability that it is truly
defective?

/10 9. A small brewery has three bottling machines. Machine A produces 40% of all the bottles,
machines B and C produce 30% each. Five percent of bottles filled by A, four percent of
bottles filled by B, and three percent of bottles filled by C are rejected for some reason.

a) If a bottle is filled by A or B, what is the probability that it is rejected?

b) If a bottle is rejected, what is the probability that it was filled by A?

/10 10. A computer program consists of two blocks written independently by two different program-
mers. The first block has an error with probability 0.2. The second block has an error with
probability 0.3. If the program returns an error, what is the probability that there is an error
in both blocks?

/10 11. The following situation occurred on a midterm exam. Students X, Y , and Z forgot to sign
their papers. Professor knows that they can write a good exam with probabilities 0.8, 0.7,
and 0.5, respectively. After grading, he notices that two unsigned exams are good and one is
bad. Given this information, and assuming that students worked independently of each other,
what is the probability that the bad exam belongs to student Z?

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Solutions
1. Let C = {knows C/C++} and F = {knows Fortran}. We have P (C) = 0.7, P (F ) = 0.6, and
P (C F ) = 0.5.
P (CF ) 0.5
a) P (F |C) = P (C)
= 0.7
= 5/7 or 0.714
P (CF ) 0.5
b) P (C|F ) = P (F )
= 0.6
= 5/6 or 0.833
P ({CF }{CF }) P (CF ) 0.5
c) P (C F | C F ) = P (CF )
= P (CF )
= 0.7+0.60.5
= 5/8 or 0.625
d) Events C and F are dependent because P (F |C) 6= P (F ), P (C|F ) 6= P (C), and P (C
F ) 6= P (F )P (C).
(Note: Any one of these arguments is enough to show that they are dependent).

2. The new information is that B is not getting the contract, which is B. Then:
P (AB) P (A) 0.35
P (A|B) = P (B)
= 1P (B)
= 0.85
= 7/17
P (CB) P (C) 0.3
P (C|B) = P (B)
= 1P (B)
= 0.85
= 6/17
P (DB) P (D) 0.2
P (D|B) = P (B)
= 1P (B)
= 0.85
= 4/17

3. Let D = defective, G = good, T D = test says defective. It is given that: P (D) = 0.006,
P (T D|D) = 1, P (T D|G) = 0.02.
Using the Formula of Total Probability:
P (T D) = P (T D|D)P (D) + P (T D|G)P (G) = 1 0.006 + 0.02 (1 0.006) = 0.02588
Using the Bayes theorem:
P (D|T D) = (1 0.006)/0.02588 = 0.232

4. Given: P (F ) = 0.70, P (M ) = 0.30, P (smoke|F ) = 0.20 and P (smoke|M ) = 0.25.

a) P (F smoke) = P (smoke|F )P (F ) = 0.20 0.70 = 0.14

b) P (M smoke) = P (smoke|M )P (M ) = 0.25 0.30 = 0.075

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 c) P (smoke) = P (smoke|M )P (M ) + P (smoke|F )P (F ) = 0.14 + 0.075 = 0.215

5. Use the Formula of Total Probability,

P (no error) = 4k=1 P (no error | line k)P (line k)
P

= (0.998)(0.4) + (0.999)(0.3) + (0.997)(0.1) + (0.992)(0.2) = 0.997

6. a) 0.48
b) 0.24
c) 0.12
d) 0.16
Hint: Denote the events A, B, C, and T (two or more). Write all the given probabilities. You
are asked to compute 4 conditional probabilities, given that a blackout due to an overload has
occurred. Find the probability of such a blackout by the Formula of Total Probability. Then use
the Bayes Formula.

7. Let A = {stopped by the 1st}, B = {stopped by the 2nd} and S = {stopped}.

Given: P (A) = 0.3, P (B|A) = 0.6. Also, A and B are disjoint events because the second
inspector does not observe the articles stopped by the first inspector.
Therefore, P (B) = P (A B) = P (A)P (B|A) = (0.7)(0.6) = 0.42.

a) Since A and B are disjoint, P (S) = P (A B) = P (A) + P (B) = 0.3 + 0.42 = 0.72

b)
P (A S) P (A) 0.3
P (A|S) = = = = 5/12
P (S) P (S) 0.72

8. Let D = {defect}, I = {identified as defective}, and C = {identified correctly}.

a) Total Probability: P (C) = P (C|D)P (D) + P (C|D)P (D) = (0.9)(0.1) + (0.8)(1 0.1) =
0.81

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 b) Bayes Rule:

P (I|D)P (D) (0.9)(0.1)

P (D|I) = = = 1/3
P (I|D)P (D) + P (I|D)P (D) (0.9)(0.1) + (1 0.8)(1 0.1)

9. a) 8/175
b) 20/41
Hints:
In (a), use the definition of a conditional probability. You will have to compute the probability
P {(A B) (rejected)} which is P {A (rejected)} + P {B (rejected)}.
In (b), use the Bayes Formula.

10. Let A = {Error in the 1st block} and B = {Error in the 2nd block}. Then P {A} = 0.2,
P {B} = 0.3, and P {A B} = 0.06, by independence.
P { error in program } = P {A B} = 0.2 + 0.3 0.06 = 0.44.
By the definition of conditional probability,

P {A B} 0.06
P {A B | A B} = = = 0.1364
P {A B} 0.44

11. Denote the events: XG = {student X wrote a good exam}, XB = {student X wrote a bad exam},
YG = {student Y wrote a good exam}, etc.
Also, let A be the event two good and one bad exams which is what Professor has observed.
It is given that: P {XG } = 0.8, P {YG } = 0.7, and P {ZG } = 0.5.
We need to find: P {ZB |A}.
This conditional probability equals

P {A ZB }
P {ZB |A} = .
P {A}

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 Event A consists of three outcomes depending on the student who wrote the bad exam. Adding
their probabilities, we get:
P {A} = P {XG YG ZB } + P {XG YB ZG } + P {XB YG ZG }
= (0.8)(0.7)(0.5) + (0.8)(0.3)(0.5) + (0.2)(0.7)(0.5) = 0.28 + 0.12 + 0.07 = 0.47.
The first of these outcomes is {A ZB }. Then

0.28
P {ZB |A} = = 28/47 or 0.5957.
0.47

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