HOMEWORK 2 EE250 Fall 2009

DUE: SEP 18, 2009 - Friday SJSU - Electrical Engineering

Reading Assignment
Read Sections 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.5 in LG (3rd Ed).
NOTE: Please drop your homework under my door on Friday.

Problem 1 [10 points]

A transmitter sends X from one of the three possible letters SX = {a, b, c}. The associated proba-
bilities is given as:
P (X = a) = 0.3, P (X = b) = 0.5, P (X = c) = ζ.
The channel distorts the transmitted signal and the receiver receives one of three possible signals
SY = {α, β, γ}.

X in {a,b,c} Channel Y in {α,β,γ}

Consider the ternary channel given in the figure:

a 0.6 α
0.1
0.1
0.3
b 0.5 β
0.1
0.1
0.4 γ
c
0.8

Figure 1: Conditional probabilities associated with the ternary channel.

P (Y = i|X = j), i ∈ SX , j ∈ SY

• Find P (X = c) = ζ.

• Find P (Y = α).

• Find P (X = a|Y = α).

• Assume a simple detector D maps α to a, β to b, and γ to c. What is the error probability?

1
Problem 2 [10 points]
a) Suppose we draw 10 cards out of deck of 52. What is the expected value of the number of
aces we get.

b) Suppose we pick 5 students at random from a class of 10 boys and 15 girls. Let X be the
number of boys selected and let Y be the number of girls selected. Find E(X − Y ).

c) Suppose we roll a fair die repeatedly until we see 6 and let R be the number of rolls required.
Find the mean and variance of R.

Problem 3 [10 points]

An urn contains 5 balls (2 red balls and 3 black balls). Balls are selected one by one without
replacement. Let the random variable X denote the number of draws required to obtain the first
red ball.

a) Find the sample space and pmf for X

b) Find E(X), V ar(X) and E[X 2 ].

c) Repeat part-a and part-b assuming balls are selected one by one with replacement.