Alexandria University Faculty of Engineering

SSP Performance Evaluation

Sheet 1: Review of Probability Distributions

(1) Given that f ( x ) = k 4 x is a probability distribution for a random variable X that can take on the values x = 0, 1, 2,3 (a) Find the constant k such that f(x) is a valid probability mass function (b) Find the mean of X. (c) Find the standard deviation of X. (d) Find P(X > 2). (e) Repeat parts (a), (c) and (e) if X can assume any non-negative integer. (2) A continuous random variable X has the given cumulative distribution function. , x < 1 0 3 x + 1 F( x ) = , 1 x < 2 9 ,x2 1 (a) Determine P( X < 1 | X > 0.5) (b) Find E( 2 X + 4) (3) On a network gateway, measurements show that the number of packets in the gateway follows a geometric distribution. The probability that the gateway is idle is 0.75. (i) What is the probability of buffer overflow if the gateway had only 13 buffers? (ii) How many buffers do we need to keep packet loss less than one packet per million? (Hint: use formula for sum of a finite geometric series) (4) The response time on a database system is exponentially distributed with an average of 3 seconds. What is the value of the response time which is not exceeded in 90% of the queries submitted to the database (90-percentile) ? (5) In a large computer network, users log-ons to the system can be modeled as a Poisson process with a mean of 25 log-ons per hour. (i) What is the probability that there are no log-ons in an interval of 6 minutes? (ii) What is the probability of 20 log-ons in one hour? (iii) What is the probability that the time until the next log-on is between 2 and 3 minutes? (iv) Determine the length of an interval of time such that the probability that no log-ons occurs in the interval is 0.9. (6) The number of telephone calls that arrive at a phone exchange is often modeled as a Poisson random variable. Assume that on average there are 5 calls per minute. (i) What is the probability there are exactly 7 calls in two minutes? (ii) What is the probability that the time until the next call arrives does not exceed 20 seconds? (iii) If no calls arrived during the past 10 seconds, what is the probability that the first call arrives within the next 20 seconds? (iv) What is the probability that the next 2 calls will occur within the next minute? (Hint: use the memoryless property in (iii) and the Erlang distribution in (iv)) Erlang(, ) Distribution: () =
()!

Page 1 of 1