PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS - SAMPLE EXAM QUESTIONS

1. If one card is drawn from a well-shuffled bridge deck of 52 playing cards (13 of each suit),
what is the probability that the card is a king or a club?
2. Four of the light bulbs in a box of ten bulbs are burnt out or otherwise defective. If two
bulbs are selected at random without replacement and tested, what is the probability that
exactly one defective bulb is found? What is the probability that exactly two defective
bulbs are found?
3. A fair six-sided die is tossed twice. What is the probability that a five will occur at least
once?
4. An oil company is bidding for the rights to drill a well in field A and a well in field B.
The probability it will drill a well in field A is 40%. If it does, the probability the well will
be successful is 45%. The probability it will drill a well in field B is 30%. If it does, the
probability the well will be successful is 55%. Calculate each of the following probabilities:
(a) probability of a successful well in field A,
(b) probability of a successful well in field B,
(c) probability of both a successful well in field A and a successful well in field B,
(d) probability of at least one successful well in the two fields together,
(e) probability of no successful well in field A,
(f) probability of no successful well in field B,
(g) probability of no successful well in the two fields together,
(h) probability of exactly one successful well in the two fields together.
5. In a group of 72 students, 14 take neither English nor chemistry, 42 take English and 38
take chemistry. What is the probability that a student chosen at random from this group
takes:
(a) both English and chemistry?
(b) chemistry but not English?
6. Three balls are drawn one after the other from a bag containing 6 red balls, 5 yellow balls
and 3 green balls. What is the probability that all three balls are yellow if:
(a) the ball is replaced after each draw and the contents are well mixed?
(b) the ball is not replaced after each draw?

7. A company produces machine components which pass through an automatic testing machine. 5% of the components entering the testing machine are defective. However, the
machine is not entirely reliable. If a component is defective there is 4% probability that it
will not be rejected. If a component is not defective there is 7% probability that it will be
rejected.
(a) What fraction of all the components are rejected?
(b) What fraction of the components rejected are actually not defective?
(c) What fraction of those not rejected are defective?
8. Three different machines Ml, M2, and M3 are used to produce similar electronic components. Machines Ml, M2, and M3 produce 20%, 30% and 50% of the components respectively. It is known that the probabilities that the machines produce defective components
are 1% for M1, 2% for M2, and 3% for M3. If a component is selected randomly from a
large batch, and that component is defective, find the probability that it was produced by
M1.
9. It is known that of the articles produced by a factory, 20% come from Machine A, 30%
from Machine B, and 50% from Machine C. The percentages of satisfactory articles among
those produced are 95% for A, 85% for B and 90% for C. An article is chosen at random.
(a) What is the probability that it is satisfactory?
(b) Assuming that the article is satisfactory, what is the probability that it was produced
by Machine A?
10. The numbers were as follows:
Group A: 2, 3, 4, 8
Group B: 1, 2, 4, 10
Group C: 0, 1, 5, 11
Find the sample variance and the sample standard deviation of each group of numbers.
11. Consider the sample consisting of the following nine results :
2.3, 7.2, 3.7, 4.6, 5.0, 7.0, 3.7, 4.9, 4.2.
(a) Find the median of this set of results by two different methods.
(b) Find the lower quartile.
(c) Find the upper quartile.
(d) Estimate the probability that an item, from the population from which this sample
came, would be less than 4.9.
(e) Estimate the probability that an item from that population would be less than 3.7.

12. A probability function is given by p(0) = 0.3164, p(1) = 0.4219, p(2) = 0.2109, p(3) =
0.0469, and p(4) = 0.0039. Find its mean and variance.
13. The probabilities of various numbers of failures in a mechanical test are as follows:
Pr[0 failures] = 0.21,

Pr[l failure] = 0.43,

Pr[3 failures] = 0.08,

Pr[2 failures] = 0.28,

Pr[more than 3 failures] = 0.

What is the expected number of failures?

14. Three items are selected at random without replacement from a box containing ten items, of
which four are defective. Calculate the probability distribution for the number of defectives
in the sample. What is the expected number of defectives in the sample?
15. A discrete random variable, X, has three possible results with the following probabilities:
1
Pr [X = 1] = ,
6

1
Pr [X = 2] = ,
3

1
Pr [X = 3] = .
2

No other results can occur.

(a) Sketch a graph of the probability function.
(b) What is the mean or expected value of this random variable?
(c) What are the variance and standard deviation of this random variable?
16. A probability density function is given by:

(a)f (x) =

ax2 ,

0x2

0,

otherwise

(b)f (x) =

a2 ,
x

1x5

0,

otherwise

(a) What is the value of a?

(b) From this obtain the probability that X is between 2 and 4.
(c) What is the probability that X is exactly 2?
(d) Find the cumulative distribution function of X.
(f) Find the mean and standard deviation of X.
17. An electrical voltage is determined by the probability density function

f (x) =

1,
2

0 x 2

0,

otherwise

(a) Find its cumulative distribution function for all values of x.

(b) Find the mean of this probability distribution.
(c) Find its standard deviation.

18. The probability of failure of a mechanical device as a function of time is given by the
following probability density function:

f (x) =

3e3x ,

x0

0,

otherwise

where x is time in months.

(a) Find the mean of the probability distribution.
(b) Find the standard deviation of the probability distribution.
(c) What is the probability that the device will fail within one standard deviation of its
mean lifetime?
(d) What is the probability that the device will fail within two standard deviations of its
mean lifetime?
19. A city installs 2000 electric lamps for street lighting. These lamps have a mean burning
life of 1000 hours with a standard deviation of 200 hours. The normal distribution is a
close approximation to this case.
(a) What is the probability that a lamp will fail in the first 700 burning hours?
(b) What is the probability that a lamp will fail between 900 and 1300 burning hours?
(c) How many lamps are expected to fail between 900 and 1300 burning hours?
(d) After how many burning hours would we expect 10% of the lamps to be left?
20. In another city 2500 electric lamps are installed for street lighting. The lamps come from
a different manufacturer and have a mean burning life of 1050 hours. We know from past
experience that the distribution of burning lives approximates a normal distribution. The
250th lamp fails after 819 hours. Approximately what is the standard deviation of burning
lives for this set of lamps?
21. The strength of steel wire made by an existing process is normally distributed with a
mean of 1250 and a standard deviation of 150. A batch of wire is made by a new process,
and a random sample consisting of 25 measurements gives an average strength of 1312.
Assume that the standard deviation does not change. Is there evidence at the 1% level of
significance that the new process gives a larger mean strength than the old?
22. When a manufacturing process is operating properly, the mean length of a certain part is
known to be 6.175 inches, and lengths are normally distributed. The standard deviation of
this length is 0.0080 inches. If a sample consisting of 6 items taken from current production
has a mean length of 6.168 inches, is there evidence at the 5% level of significance that
some adjustment of the process is required?