36-217, Spring 2015

Homework 2
Due January 29
REMEMBER TO WRITE YOUR NAME AND ANDREW ID ON THE FIRST PAGE OF YOUR ASSIGNMENT

1. The Hat Problem.

Suppose that n people throw their hats in a box. The hats are mixed up and the each person randomly
selects one hat from the box. (Each hat can be picked by only one person and each assignment of
hats to persons is equally likely.) Let pn be the probability that at last one persons will get his/her
hat back. Below you will show that limn pn = 1 1/e = 0.63212 . . .. Proceed as follows. First let n
be fixed and let Ai be the event that the ith person got his/her hat back.
(a) Show that P (Ai ) = n1 .
(b) More generally, show that, for any selection of k indexex i1 < i2 < . . . < ik (with 1 k n),
P (Ai1 Ai2 . . . Aik ) =

1
.
n(n 1) . . . (n k + 1)

(c) Conclude that, for any 1 k n,

X

P (Ai1 Ai2 . . . Aik ) =

i1 <i2 <...<ik

1
.
k!

(d) Use the above conclusion and the facts below to conclude that limn pn = 1 1/e.
You may use the following facts:
Fact 1: Recall the general inclusion/exclusion formula for the probability of a union of n events:
P
Pn
S
P (Ai ) + i1 <i2 (1)2+1 P (Ai1 Ai2 ) + . . .
P ( ni=1 Ai ) =
i=1 P
. . . + i1 <i2 <...<ik (1)k+1 P (Ai1 . . . Aik ) + . . . + (1)n+1 P (A1 . . . An )
Fact 2: limn

Pn

i+1 1
i=1 (1)
i!

= 1 1/e = 0.63212 . . . , where e = 2.71828 . . ..

2. Among a group of 200 students, 137 students are enrolled in a math (M) class, 50 in a history (H)
class, 124 in a music (U) class. The number of students enrolled in both M and H is 33; the number
of students enrolled in both U and H is 29; the number of students enrolled in both M and U is 92.
Finally the number of students enrolled in M, H and U is 18. What is the probability that a student
selected at random from the group of 200 students will be enrolled in at least one of the three classes?
3. In a certain school, 60% of the students wear neither a ring nor a necklace, 20% wear a ring and 30%
wear a necklace. One student is randomly selected. What is the probability that
(a) the student is wearing a ring or a necklace?
(b) the student is wearing a ring and a necklace?
(c) the students is wearing a ring but not a necklace?

4. A pair of dice is rolled until a sum of 5 or 7 appears. Find the probability that a 5 occurs first. Hint:
Let A denote the event that a 5 occurs first and let An be the event that a 5 occurs on the nth roll
and no 5 or 7 occurs on the first n 1 rolls. Then A = n An . To compute each P (An ) you may
assume that, for every n > 1, each of the 36n possible outcomes of the experiment of rolling the pair
of dice n times are equally likely.
5. An urn contains n balls, of which one is special. Of these n balls, k are to be randomly selected,
where 1 < k < n. We consider two different ways of randomly choosing balls from the urn:
(a) k balls are simultaneously withdrawn, with each ball in the urn being equally likely to be picked;
(b) the k balls are withdrawn one at a time, with each selection being equally likely to be any of
the balls that remain at the time.
For each of the two sampling methods, find the probability that the special ball is selected.
6. Your statistics teacher announces a thirty-page assignment on Monday that is to be finished by
Friday. You intend to read the first n1 pages on Monday, the next n2 pages on Tuesday, the next n3
pages on Wednesday, and the final n4 pages on Thursday, where n1 + n2 + n3 + n4 = 30 and each
ni 1. In how many ways can you complete the assignment?
7. A magical four-sided die is rolled twice. Let S be the sum of the results of the two rolls. We are told
that the probability that S = k is proportional to k, for k = 2, 3, . . . , 8, and that all possible ways
that a given sum k can arise are equally likely. Construct an appropriate probabilistic model and
find the probability of getting doubles, i.e. the same number in both rolls.
8. Consider the following technique for shuffling a deck of n cards: For any initial ordering of the cards,
go through the deck one card at a time and at each card, flip a fair coin. If the coin comes up heads,
then leave the card where it is; if the coin comes up tails, then move that card to the end of the deck.
After the coin has been flipped n times, say that one round has been completed. For instance, if
n = 4 and the initial ordering is 1, 2, 3, 4, then if the successive flips result in the outcome H, T, T, H,
then the ordering at the end of the round is 1, 4, 2, 3. Assuming that all possible outcomes of the
sequence of n coin flips are equally likely, what is the probability that the ordering after one round
is the same as the initial ordering? Use the following fact: the only way the ordering is preserved is
if, for some 0 k n, the first k tosses all result in H and the remaining in T .