Practice Problems (Solved in the class)

Problem 1: In a certain residential suburb, 60% of all households subscribe to the metropolitan
newspaper published in a nearby city, 80% subscribe to the local paper, and 50% of all
households subscribe to both papers. If a household is selected at random, what is the probability
that it subscribes to (1) at least one of the two newspapers and (2) exactly one of the two
newspapers? (Ans: 0.9 & 0.4)

Problem 2: Consider randomly selecting a student at a certain university, and let A denote the
event that the selected individual has a Visa credit card and B be the analogous event for a
MasterCard. Suppose that P(A) = 0.5, P(B) = 0.4, and P(A ∩ B) = 0.25.
a. Compute the probability that the selected individual has at least one of the two types of cards.
(Ans: 0.65)
b. What is the probability that the selected individual has neither type of card? (Ans: 0.35)

Problem 3: Suppose that of all individuals buying a certain digital camera, 60% include an
optional memory card in their purchase, 40% include an extra battery, and 30% include both a
card and battery.
a. What is the probability that an individual who has purchased a battery has also purchased
a memory card? (Ans: 0.75)
b. What is the probability that an individual who has purchased a memory card has also
purchased a battery? (Ans: 0.50)

Problem 4: Only 1 in 1000 adults is afflicted with a rare disease for which a diagnostic test has
been developed. The test is such that when an individual actually has the disease, a positive
result will occur 99% of the time, whereas an individual without the disease will show a positive
test result only 2% of the time. If a randomly selected individual is tested and the result is
positive, what is the probability that the individual has the disease?

Problem 5: The probability that Sam parks in a no-parking zone and gets a parking ticket is
0.06, and the probability that Sam cannot find a legal parking space and has to park in the no-

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parking zone is 0.2. On Tuesday, Sam arrives at school and has to park in a no-parking zone.
Find the probability that he will get a ticket.

Problem 6: A recent survey asked 100 people if they thought women in the armed forces should
be permitted to participate in combat. The results are shown as follows:
Gender
Gender Yes
Yes No
No Total
Total

Male
Male 32
32 18
18 50
50

Female
Female 88 42
42 50
50

Total
Total 40
40 60
60 100
100

Find the probability that the respondent answered “yes” given that the respondent was a female.

Problem 7: If a student randomly guesses at five multiple-choice questions, find the probability
that the student gets exactly three correct. Each question has five possible choices.

Problem 8: A survey found that 30% of teenage consumers received their spending money from
part-time jobs. If five teenagers are selected at random, find the probability that at least three of
them will have part-time jobs.

Example 9: The amount of distilled water dispensed by a certain machine is normally distributed
with mean value 64 oz and standard deviation 0.78 oz. What container size c will ensure that
overflow occurs only 0.5% of the time?

Example 10: Each month, an American household generates an average of 28 pounds of

newspaper for garbage or recycling. Assume the standard deviation is 2 pounds. Assume the
amount generated is normally distributed. If a household is selected at random, find the
probability of its generating more than 30.2 pounds per month.

Example 11: The American Automobile Association reports that the average time it takes to
respond to an emergency call is 25 minutes. Assume the variable is approximately normally
distributed and the standard deviation is 4.5 minutes. If 80 calls are randomly selected,
approximately how many will be responded to in less than 15 minutes?

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Example 12: An exclusive college desires to accept only the top 10% of all graduating seniors
based on the results of a national placement test. This test has a mean of 500 and a standard
deviation of 100. Find the cutoff score for the exam. Assume the variable is normally distributed.

Example 13: The number of industrial injuries per working week in a particular factory is
known to follow a Poisson distribution with mean 0.5. Find the probability that
(a) In a particular week there will be less than 2 accidents and more than 2 accidents (0.9098,
0.0144).
(b) In a three week period there will be no accident (0.223).

Problem 14: Consider babies born in the “normal” range of 37–43 weeks gestational age.
Extensive data supports the assumption that for such babies born in the United States, birth
weight is normally distributed with mean 3432 g and standard deviation 482 g. [The article “Are
Babies Normal?” (The American Statistician (1999): 298–302) analyzed data from a particular
year; for a sensible choice of class intervals, a histogram did not look at all normal but after
further investigations it was determined that this was due to some hospitals measuring weight in
grams and others measuring to the nearest ounce and then converting to grams. A modified
choice of class intervals that allowed for this gave a histogram that was well described by a
normal distribution.]
a. What is the probability that the birth weight of a randomly selected baby of this type exceeds
4000 grams? Is between 3000 and 4000 grams? (Answer: 0.1190, 0.6969)
b. What is the probability that the birth weight of a randomly selected baby of this type is either
less than 2000 grams or greater than 5000 grams? (Answer: 0.0021)
c. What is the probability that the birth weight of a randomly selected baby of this type exceeds 7
lb? (Answer: 0.7054)

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