MAB/MAN 210

WORKSHEET FOR SECTION 3

A) Questions for Group Work (compulsory) The following 6 questions are meant to be solved in your group. Out of these 6 questions, questions 3, 4 and 6 are part of Assignment 2. (The other questions for Assignment 2 are on the Worksheet for Section 4.) 1. Nancy and Ronald are volunteer SES workers who are on call during nonworking hours. Nancy is within earshot of her pager 80% of the time. Ronald responds to his pager only 50% of the time. If they respond to alerts independently of each other, what is the probability at least one of them responds to a call? Suppose a third person in their locality, who has a 60% chance of hearing his pager and who also responds independently of the others, is added to their local team. By how much would his addition increase the probability of at least one of the three responding to a call? A vendor at a football venue sells scarves and caps and decides to also sell T-Shirts. From past data he estimates that 60% of his customers buy a cap, 40% of his customers buy a scarf and of those who buy a cap, 50% also buy a scarf. From observation, he thinks that 30% of customers who buy a cap will also buy a T-Shirt but that nobody will buy a scarf and a T-Shirt. He also estimates that 75% of his customers will buy at least one item of clothing. With these assumptions, what % of his customers is he predicting will buy a T-Shirt? [6 marks] A police interrogation handbook has suggested the following controversial procedure for attempting to get someone to admit to a crime. Step 1: Be gentle and ask if they committed the crime Step 2: Get more aggressive and explain to them the consequences if they are lying Step 3: Use reverse psychology techniques to make them feel guilty Step 4: Threaten to speak to their family if they dont admit to the crime Interrogators are to carry out each step until the person admits to the crime (or does not admit at any step). Empirical evidence suggests that while this is a good way of getting people to admit to a crime, it can also force innocent people to admit to a crime they never committed. The following table gives the relevant probabilities that have been collected over the years from using this strategy.
Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 0.5 0.6 0.75 0.9 0 0.02 0.04 0.1

2.

3*.

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The probability of admitting to the crime for a particular Step given in the table above is conditional on not admitting to the crime at all previous steps. For example, the value 0.6 is the probability that, given a person is guilty, the person admits to the crime at Step 2 given that they did not admit to the crime at Step 1. The police know that for a particular crime, 90% of people they bring in are guilty. Use the events G for person is guilty and for person admits to the crime at step to answer the following questions. A suspect is brought into the police station for the interrogation. a) What is the probability that this person admits to the crime at Step 2 of the interrogation process? b) If this person admits to the crime at Step 3 of the interrogation process, what is the probability that theyre guilty? c) If this person did not commit the crime, what is the probability that they admit to the crime nonetheless? 4*. [5 marks] Consider a biased coin, where heads is twice as likely to occur as tails. Tosses of the coin are independent. If the coin shows tails, a chip is drawn from Urn I. If the coin shows heads, a chip is drawn from Urn II. Urn I contains three white chips and four red chips. Urn II contains six white chips and three red chips. Chips removed from an Urn are not put back in the Urn. Answer the following: a) What is the probability that a white chip will be drawn on the first toss? b) What is the probability that a white chip will be drawn on the second toss? (i.e. you do not yet know the outcome of the first toss) 5. Medical case histories show that different illnesses may produce identical symptoms. Suppose that a particular set of symptoms occurs only when any one of three illnesses occurs. Also assume that the simultaneous occurrence of more than one of these illnesses is impossible. The probabilities of an individual having the first, second and third disease are 0.01, 0.005 and 0.02, respectively. Furthermore, the probabilities of developing the set of symptoms given they have the first, second and third disease are 0.9, 0.95 and 0.75. Using this information, assuming that an ill person exhibits the symptoms, a) What is the probability that this person has the first illness? b) What is the probability that this person has the first or second illness?

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6*.

[6 marks] A particular disease is prevalent in about 1% of the population. There are two tests available with differing costs and invasiveness for attempting to detect the disease. The first test is less expensive and less invasive, but is not as good at detecting the disease. For a diseased person, the first test detects the disease 60% of the time. The same event occurs 20% of the time when the disease is not present. The second test has a probability of 0.95 and 0.01 of indicating the disease is present when a person is diseased and not diseased, respectively. When the disease is present, the probability of at least one test indicating the disease is present is 0.99. Answer the following: a) The results of test 1 for a particular person indicates the presence of the disease. What is the probability that the patient actually has the disease? b) If a person has the disease and the first test indicates so, what is the probability that the second test also indicates the disease is present? c) If the results of the two tests are independent when the disease is not present, what is the probability that a person has the disease given at least one of the two tests detected the presence of the disease?

The questions marked with * are part of Assignment 2.

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B) Questions for further practice (voluntary)

1) Bert and Ernie are taking part in a pub-quiz night and have to answer a yes-no question. Both Bert and Ernie will give the correct answer with probability p, independently of each other. Which of the two strategies is better for them? One of them answers the question. Both Bert and Ernie think about the question. If they agree they give the common answer; if they disagree, they toss a die to determine which answer to give. If the die shows an odd number they answer yes, otherwise they answer no. 2) At a party, there are 6 boys and 4 girls who are into punk rock, and 6 girls who are into hip hop. How many boys into hip hop must be at the party for sex and taste of music to be independent when a person at the party is chosen at random? 3) i) In assessing proposed new products, a group of three buyers assign scores to each proposal, with the scores ranging from 1 to 10. A buyer can also choose not to give any score to a proposal. The probability of a proposed new product scoring at least k from a buyer is assumed to be , . (Note that the probability of a score of 0 is ) a) Show that the probability that a buyer gives a score of exactly , and for . to a proposal is

b) Assuming that buyers act independently, what is the probability that a proposal gets a total score of at least 28? (ii) Sometimes just the chief buyer and one other buyer do the assessments of proposed new products, and it has been found that for a proposal to be accepted it needs either a 10 from the chief buyer and at least a 6 from the other buyer, or at least an 8 from both the chief buyer and the other buyer. Assuming the probabilities from (i) apply to both the chief buyer and the other buyer, and that they act independently, what is the probability that a proposal is accepted? 4) A dashboard warning light is supposed to flash red if a cars oil pressure is too low. On a certain model, the probability of the light flashing when it should is 0.95. However 2% of the time it flashes for no apparent reason. If there is a 10% chance the oil pressure is low, what is the probability that a driver needs to be concerned if the warning light goes on? 5) (i) A test for defective components is 95% reliable when a component is defective and 90% reliable when a component is not defective. Only 6% of components are defective. Find the probability that a component is defective when the test says it is defective.

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(ii) How reliable should the test be when a component is defective (i.e., what should be used instead of 95% in (i)) if it is desired to have the probability of a component being defective when the test says it is not defective, to be no more than 0.001? (Keep the other information in (i) the same.) 6) For a particular word, denoted by W, a speech recognition device is 98% reliable in recognising the word but also has a 5% chance of misclassifying other words as this word (W). The word W is a common word, with a 10% chance of occurring. When the device say s that the word W occurs, what is the probability that it did occur? The manufacturers of the above device wish to increase the probability in (i) to 0.8, by decreasing the probability of the device misclassifying other words as the word W . To what probability do they need to reduce the 5% above in order to increase the probability in (i) to 0.8? 7) A supermarket expands its hair product lines by including a new range. (i) The marketing information for the new range claims the range appeals particularly to males, stating that 20% of males and 10% of females will buy this range. The marketing information also claims that this range will have 15% of the overall hair product market. What breakup of shoppers into male, female, is this marketing information assuming? (ii) The supermarket thinks that 60% of its shoppers are female. After carrying the new range, the supermarket observes that this new range is accounting for 10% of hair products sales, and also thinks that 70% of sales of the new range are to males. Using these %s, obtain the probabilities that a) a male customer of the supermarket will buy the new range, and b) a female customer of the supermarket will buy the new range.

8) A component can have either or both of two types of defects, denoted by A and B. A test is designed to classify components as defective or not defective. The probability that the test classifies a component as defective, is 0.9, 0.85, or 0.95, for components with, respectively, type A, type B, or both, defects. If a component is non-defective, the test has a chance of 0.1 of mistakenly classifying it as defective. From past experience, type A defects occur in 4% of components, type B defects occur in 2% of components, and both defects occur in 1% of components. A component is classified as defective by the test. a) What is the probability that the component has a defect of type A? b) What is the probability that the component is defective?

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9) A science faculty is setting up a new course in pharmaceuticals, and establishes an email list of staff involved in the course development. This email list is a subset of the faculty staff email listing. Consider a staff member on this list. a) Given that an email about the new pharmaceutical course has been sent out, the probability it goes to the course development email list is 1. Let Ph denote the event that an email coming to the staff member is about pharmaceuticals; let L be the event it is through the course development list, and let Sp denote the event that the email is spam. (Assume that the only non-spam emails that come to the staff member about pharmaceuticals are about the course.) Show that

Pr Ph L | Sp Pr L | Sp

b) Now consider spam emails. For spam emails, suppose the probability an email is about pharmaceuticals is 0.2, and the probability it is coming to those on the course development list is 0.5, independently of its subject matter. Show that for spam email coming to the staff member, the probability that it is either about pharmaceuticals or coming to the course development email list or both is given by 0.6. c) The proportion of emails coming to the staff member that are spam is 10%. Of the non-spam emails coming to the staff member, 30% are coming through the course development email list. If an email coming to the staff member is either about pharmaceuticals or coming to the course development email list or both, show that the probability it is spam is 0.1818. 10) In a water quality monitoring schedule, water samples from dams are tested for a particular strain of bacteria which is found in 2% of dam water. The test for this strain is 95% reliable when the bacteria are present, and 90% reliable when they are not. a) If the test says that the bacteria are present in a sample, what is the probability that the bacteria are not present? b) If the test says that the bacteria are not present in a sample, what is the probability that the bacteria are present? c) The testing is extended to include sources of water that feed into dams. In such sources it is known that the bacterial strain occurs in 3% of the water. Twice as much testing is carried out for dams as for the other sources. In what proportions of tests that return a negative result (that is, that say the bacteria are not present) are the bacteria actually present? 11) Kermit the Frog is having a party (for reasons only frogs can understand) and invites Bert and Ernie. Bert says he will probably be able to make it to the party. Only with probability 0.1 he will have other commitments. Ernie, who is not really keen on going to Kermits party, announces he will toss a coin to decide whether he will go. a) What is the probability that at least one of the two mates will attend the party? b) Miss Piggy, who has been invited, too, tells Kermit that she is coming back from a show in Las Vegas on the night the party is taking place. Unless her plane is too late, which she estimates to happen with probability 0.2, she agrees to come. What is the probability that at least two of the three will attend Kermits party?

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When answering this question, explain why you used which one of our probability rules. For (ii) draw a set diagram to get an overview of the situation.

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