ECI-114 Probabilistic Systems Analysis for Civil Engineers, 2018

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

University of California Davis

Instructor: Miguel Jaller

3143 Ghausi Hall, mjaller@ucdavis.edu

Homework # 1: Statistics and Probability

The objective of this assignment is to familiarize yourself with the statistics and probability concepts
discussed in class.

Note: Please be organized and clear. If we cannot understand your work, we will grade accordingly.
For the problems that you only provide a solution without the process we will mark down the grade.

For this assignment you need to:

1) 18 points, 6 each. A professor won USD 1 million playing poker in las Vegas during spring break.
At his return he wants to help, and creates a scholarship program for the top 7 University freshmen
students. In essence, the professor splits the money in 4 different funding-level fellowships. Each
student can only be awarded 1 fellowship.

a) Please explain how would you estimate the different ways in which the fellowships could be awarded?
Estimate the number.
Alt Ans 1: 7 * 6 * 5 * 4 = 840
Alt Ans 2:

b) Under the assumption that the simple events are equally likely (each student has the same probability
of being awarded a fellowship), find the probability that student No. 2 is awarded one.
Alt Ans 1: Using what we know about equally likely events: 4 scholarships/7 students =
4/7=0.571
Alt Ans 2: If we select all the ways to award scholarships with a specific student in the selection,

and divide by all the possible ways to assign fellowships: = 4/7 = 0.571

c) Suppose students 5 and 6 have submitted proposals, if the fellowships are awarded at random by the
professor, find the probability that both of these students receive fellowships.
Alt Ans 1: Simplest approach:
Student 5 (C5) has the probability of winning a scholarship:
P(C5) = (number of scholarships)/(number of students)=4/7
Now that C5 has already won a scholarship, student 6 (C6) has some probability of winning a
scholarship:
P(C6) = (number of remaining scholarship)/(number of remaining students) =3/6

So the probability of both winning a scholarship is the probability of both student getting a
scholarship with the probability given above P(both students getting a scholarship) = P(C5)P(C6)
= (4/7)(3/6) = 0.2857

Alt Ans 2: Thinking about it in terms of conditional probability:

We want to know the probability of both students 5 and 6 getting a scholarship, or P(C5∩C6).
 We also know: P(C5∩C6) = P(C6∩C5) = P(C6|C5)(C5). From above in our “simple approach”
we calculated the probability of C6 getting a scholarship given that C5 got a scholarship, (number
of remaining scholarship)/(number of remaining students), this is then a conditional probability.
So,
P(C6∩C5) = P(C6|C5)(C5) = [(number of scholarships - 1)/(number of students – 1)] * [(number
of scholarships)/(number of students)]=(3/6)(4/7) = 0.2857

Alt Ans 3: Using our understanding of Permutations

We could also figure out this problem based on the relative frequency of all the ways to distribute
scholarships that include students 5 and 6, and the total number of ways to distribute scholarships:
The total number of ways to choose 2 scholarships out of 4 (one for C5 and one for C6):
C5 C6 __ __, C6 C5 __ __, __ C5 C6 __, __ C6 C5 __, C5 __ C6 __, …, etc.

So in terms of writing this as a permutation: P24

But there still remain 2 other scholarships to give out, and 5 students left to assign them to, and
for example, C5 C6 C1 C2 is NOT the same as C5 C6 C2 C1, we also need to calculate all the
ways the remaining two scholarships could be assigned, or P25 .
So, we have the total number of ways to assign C5 and C6 scholarships: P24 x P25 . To solve the
problem all you have to do is calculate the proportion (or relative frequency) of the ways students
5 and 6 can both be assigned scholarships, divided by all the ways to assign scholarships:
( P24 x P25 )/ P47 = 240/840 = 0.2857

2) 12 points, 3 each. You are doing some updates to your house and buy a lot of steel pieces to upgrade
your roof. However, there are some reasons to believe that the store sent you a lot that may not be of
the best quality. You are looking for 2 quality characteristics: 1) if the steel piece meets the required
diameter, and 2) if you can visually see defects on the pieces. You take the task of inspecting every
single piece and come up with the following results (number of pieces within each category):
Adequate diameter Inadequate diameter
No defects detected 1376 150
Defect detected 432 42

Using the inspection results, answer the following questions.

a) If a steel piece is randomly selected, what is the probability that it meets the diameter requirements?

1808/2000 = 90.4%

b) If a steel piece is randomly selected, what is the probability that it meets the diameter requirements and
has no detectable defects?

1376/2000 = 68.8%
c) If a steel piece is randomly selected and it is known to have defects detected, what is the probability
that it has not met the diameter requirement?

42/474 = 8.86%
d) If the event that a defect is detected is denoted as event DD, and the event that a steel piece does not
meet the diameter requirements is DND, how would you write the probability you calculated in part (c) in
set notation (intersection, union, conditional, etc.)?
 P(DND∩DD)/P(DD) = P(DND|DD)

3) 9 points, 3 each. Write down in set notation (intersection, union, conditional, etc.), the events
represented by the White shaded areas in the following Venn Diagrams.

a) [C U (A  Ո B)]’ = C’ Ո (A’ U B’)

b) (B U C)

c) (A Ո B Ո C’)

4) 18 points, 6 each. For a final project of my graduate course I have to split my 20 students into 5
teams of 4.

a) How many ways do I have to form the teams?

Alt 1.
Using the Partitions Rule. Where N = 20, and n1, n2,…n5 = 4

Alt 2.
The total number of ways the first team could be assembled is:
n! 20! 20 *19 *18 *17
20 C 4     4845
r!n  r ! 4!16! 1* 2 * 3 * 4
The second team could be selected from the remaining 16 students as 16 C 4 , and the
remaining teams in a similar fashion. As a result, the total number of ways is:
 20! 16! 12! 8! 4! 20! 20!
20 C 4 *16 C 4 *12 C 4 *18 C 4 *4 C 4    5  305,554,235,000
4!16! 4!12! 4!8! 4!4! 4!0! 4!4!4!4!4! 4!

b) Additionally, since each project requires a student to be the modeler, one student to be the reporter, one
student to solve the models, and one student to do outreach activities. How many total ways could these
teams be formed, assuming that students have already been assigned to the teams?
If the students are already assigned to the teams, we know which 4 of the 20 students are
already in each team. That means that in each team, the 4 positions could be assigned
4 P4  4! ways.

Alt 1.
We have differentiate the teams, but the students are already assigned. The problem could
be understood as finding the number of ways to arrange the teams that are already
assigned, resulting in 5 P5 ways to order the teams. So in total we have 5 P5  5! orders =
120

Alt 2.
We know we have 5 teams, and for each of them, 4! ways to assign the roles, so 5*4!
ways = 120

Alt 3.
Alternatively and the preferred answer: It could be argued that the total ways to assign
these roles is actually 4!5. For example, if we don’t assume that the students are fixed for
any team we can have:
4!*4!*4!*4!*4! = 4!5 = 7,962,624 a very different number than our solutions above!

c) What would change in your analyses, if you consider the problem as a sequence of steps? (Note, assign
students, and then assign the roles)
Alt 1.
You have 5 teams and 4 different positions each. One person can be chosen for any team
and any position. In general, by doing this in a sequence of steps, recalling from part a),
20!
5
there are 4! ways to create the 5 teams, and from part 2 Alt 3, 4!5 ways to assign the
20!
roles. In total, there are 5 * 4!5 ways equal to 20!.
4!

Alt 2.
Another way to look at this is thinking that each team is different and each position
within a team is different, so in essence, we have 20 different positions-team
combinations. As a result, the problem is 20 P20  20!

5) 10 points, 2 each. A random experiment has 10 possible outcomes. The sample space (S) is {p, q,
r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y}, each one equally likely. Let A be the event {r, s, t}, and let B denote the event {u,
v, w, x}. Determine the following probabilities:

a) P(A) = 3/10
b) P(B) = 4/10 = 2/5
c) P(A’) = 7/10
d) P(A∩B) = 0
e) P(AUB) = 7/10

6) 9 points, 3 each. Describe (e.g. S ={…}) the sample space for the following random experiments.
Define the events included for each experiment:

a) You have to analyze 4 bridges on a highway corridor in order and classify each as requiring or not
requiring maintenance. (4 points)

S = {YYYY, YYYN, YYNN, YYNY, YNNN, YNYY, YNYN, YNNY, NYYY, NYYN,
NYNN, NNYY, NNYN, NNNY, NNNN, NYNY}

b) In a simple game of darts, 4 darts are thrown at a board and can land in the center section or outer
section of the board. (4 points)

S= {CCCC, CCCO, CCOO, CCOC, COOO, COCC, COCO, COOC, OCCC, OCCO
OCOO, OOCC, OOCO, OOOC, OOOO, OCOC}

c) You want to book your next vacation and do some research. After, you classify the option as high cost
and medium costs, as well as long distance, medium distance, and short distance from Davis (4 points)

S= {Hl, Hm, Hs, Ml, Mm, Ms}

7) 14 points, 7 each. Suppose P(A|B) = 0.3, P(B) = 0.7, and P(A) = 0.6.

a) What is P(A∩B) = 0.3 * 0.7 = 0.21

b) What is P(B|A) = 0.21 /.6 = 0.35

8) 10 points, 2 each. A sample space of random experiments is {a, b, c, d, e} with probabilities of 0.02,
0.5, 0.04, 0.04, 0.4 respectively. Let A denote the event {a, d}, B denote the event {b, c, e}, and C
denote the event {a, b, c}. Determine the following probabilities:

a) P(A) = 0.02+0.04=0.06
b) P(B) = 0.5+0.04+0.4 = 0.94
c) P(C’) = 0.04 + 0.4 = 0.44
d) P(A∩C) = 0
e) P(AUB) = 1