Extra problems

On page 38

be 

1. The mean number of fatal accidents on a major highway is believed to
per year. Calculate the probability of no accidents during an
arbitrary month. Seasonal effects should not be taken into account.

2. A solution contains e coli-bacteria. It is believed that the mean con-

centration is about 20 per cl of the solution. A drop containing 2 ml is
spread out on a nutrient plate. Calculate the probability that this drop
gives rise to at least one colony of bacteria.

 

3. It is assumed that mobile traffic into an area that is not densily popu-


lated follow a Poisson process with mean calls per hour. This


means that the p.m.f of the number of calls during a time period of
hours is Poi . Consider a one minute long time period. Calculate
the probability that at most 2 calls arrive during this period.

On page 42
4. Suppose there are two boxes, labeled red and blue. The red box con-
tains three balls numbered 1, 3, 5, while the blue box contains two
balls numbered 2, 4. One of the boxes is picked at random by tossing
a fair coin. Then a ball is picked at random from this box. What is the
probability that the ball drawn is 5?

5. A mechanical system is built by two components (or subsystems). The

probability that the 1st component fails is 10%. If the 1st component
fails, the probability that the 2nd component fails is 20%. But if the 1st
component works, this failure probability is 5%. What is the probabil-
ity (a) that at least one of the components works, (b) that exactly one
of the components works, and (c) that the second component works

6. Two cards are dealt from a well-shuffled standard deck. What is the
probability that the 2nd card is red?

On page 46
7. Two cards are dealt from a well-shuffled standard deck. Use the Law
of Total Probability to calculate the probability that the 2nd card is a
diamond?

1
 8. A laboratory test on blood samples yields one of two results, positive
or negative. It is found that 95% of people with a particular disease
produce a positive result. However, 2% of people without the disease
will also produce a positive result. (Thus the rate of false negatives is
5% and the rate of false positives is 2%). (a) If 1% of the population
actually has the disease, what is the probability that a person chosen
at random will have the disease, given that her blood sample yields a
positive result? (b) If a doctor estimates that the probability that a
patient has the disease is about 50%, what is the probability that the
patient has the disease, given that the patient’s blood sample yields a
positive result?

9. A manufacturing process produces integrated curcuit chips. Over the

long run, the frequency of bad chips produced is around 20%. Thor-
oughly testing a chip to determine whether it is good or bad is rather
expensive, so a cheap test is used. All godd chips will pass the test,
but so will also 10% of the bad chips. (a) If the company using this
manufacturing process sells all chips which pass the cheap test, over
the long run what percentage of chips sold will be bad? (b) Given that
a chip passes the cheap test, what is the probability that it is a good
chip?

10. A site is suspected to be contaminated by cadmium. Let 
   

 
be the subjective probability (elicitated from a group of experts) that

this is the case, and let  

be the same experts subjec-


tive estimate of the relative area that is contaminated. (It is also as-
sumed that  
 
.) Assume that  soil samples are taken from

if the  th sample is contaminated, and let 

independent randomly selected locations on the site. Let 

otherwise. Let

  
  . (a) Specify the conditional distributions of  , given

 
and
 , respectively, and (b) write down formulas for how the prob-
abilities 

!


and 
 
 depend on  . Calculate the

(d) '
.

probabilities "
# $ and 
% &
for the cases (c) '
( and

On page 57
11. The life times of simple integrated curcuits are approximately exp  -

distributed. A life test of 100 such curcuits yield the mean life * )
+ ,
years. Calculate a 95% confidence interval for . 

12. In the life test referred to in the previous exercise 76 circuits failed

2
 


before 9 years use. Calculate a 95% confidence interval for the prob-
ability %
 , where  is a typical random life time.

13. During the years 2000-2004, the number of accidents with fatalities
in a large densely populated region of Sweden was 9, 6, 6, 7, 6. (a)
Calculate a 90% confidence interval for the rate of such accidents per
year in the region. Keep only the upper bound. (b) Which confidence
has the resulting statement?

3
Answers to extra problems
1. 0.819

2. 0.982

3. 0.0842

4.


5. (a) 0.98 (b) 0.125 (c) 0.935

6.


7.
 
8. (a) 32.4% (b) 97.9%

9. (a) 2.4% (b) 97.6%


  , 
    , 

10. (a)  
 bin "  

!
 



  ,,  

(b)  !

  


(c) "
# 
 "
# 


,
(d) 
% 
 
% 

11.  

 
+ ,
 

12. 

 
  or 

 
, + , +

13. (a)  
  or  


 holds with 95% confidence
 + + 

(b) 

%

+