DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY GUWAHATI

MA225 Probability Theory and Random Processes July - November 2017
Problem Sheet 2 NS

1. How many different 6-digit vehicle registration numbers are possible if the first 2 digits are to be
occupied by letters and the final 4 by numbers? How many registration numbers would be possible if
repetition among letters or numbers were prohibited?

2. Compute the probability that 10 married couples are seated at random at a round table, then no wife
sits next to her husband.

3. An examination consists of multiple-choice questions, each having five possible answers. Suppose you
are a student taking the exam. and that you reckon you have probability 0.75 of knowing the answer
to any question that may be asked and that, if you do not know, you intend to guess an answer with
probability 0.25 of being correct. What is the probability you will give the correct answer to a question?

4. A Box contains 100 tickets numbered 1, 2, . . . , 100 and 10 tickets are drawn at random (all outcomes
are equally likely). Find the probability that the highest number to appear is 71 if the draws are made
(a) with replacement, and (b) without replacement.
Find the probability that the highest number drawn is 71 and the least number drawn is 25, under
conditions (a), (b) given above.

5. Calculate the probability that a hand of 13 cards dealt from a normal shuffled pack of 52 contains
exactly two kings and one ace. What is the probability that it contains exactly one ace given that it
contains exactly two kings?

6. For events A1 , A2 , . . . , An satisfying P (A1 ∩ A2 ∩ · · · ∩ An−1 ) > 0, prove that

P (A1 ∩ A2 ∩ · · · ∩ An ) = P (A1 )P (A2 |A1 )P (A3 |A1 ∩ A2 ) · · · P (An |A1 ∩ A2 ∩ · · · ∩ An−1 ).

7. In a factory there are 100 units of a certain product, 5 of which are defective. We pick three units
from the 100 units at random. What is the probability that none of them are defective?

8. 10 percent of the surface of a sphere is coloured blue, the rest is red. Show that, irrespective of te
manner in which the colours are distributed, it is possible to inscribe a cube in S with all its vertices
red.

9. Consider a family that has two children. We are interested in the children’s genders. Our sample space
is Ω = {(G, G), (G, B), (B, G), (B, B)} and assume that all four possible outcomes are equally likely.
What is the probability that both children are girls given that the first child is a girl? We ask the
father: ”Do you have at least one daughter?” He responds ”Yes!” Given this extra information, what
is the probability that both children are girls? In other words, what is the probability that both children
are girls given that we know at least one of them is a girl?

10. There are two boxes, Box 1 has 3 red and 5 black balls and Box 2 has 2 red and 5 black balls. A
balanced (or fair) die (all the six outcomes are equally likely) is thrown once. If the outcome of the
throw is either 1 or 2 then balls are drawn at random repeatedly (with replacement) from Box 1 only;
otherwise balls are drawn only from Box 2 (with replacement). Let Bi be the event that the ith ball
drawn is black. Let Ui , i = 1, 2, be the event that the ith box is chosen for drawing the balls.

1
 (a) What are the values of P (U1 |B1 ), P (U1 |B1 ∩ B2 ), P (U1 | ∩ni=1 Bi ) and limn→∞ P (U1 | ∩ni=1 Bi )?
(b) What is the value of P (U1 | ∩∞
i=1 Bi )?
(c) What are the values of P (B2 |B1 ), P (B3 |B1 ∩ B2 ), P (Bn+1 | ∩ni=1 Bi ) and limn→∞ P (Bn+1 | ∩ni=1
Bi )?
(d) Are the events B1 and B2 stochastically (or statistically or simply) independent?

11. Given (Ω, F, P ), if P (A|B c ) = P (A|B) then are A and B (statistically) independent events? If Ac
and B c are independent events then are A and B also independent?

12. Two fair dice are rolled. Show that the event that their sum is 7 is independent of the score shown by
the first die.

13. A certain disease affects about 1 out of 10,000 people. There is a test to check whether the person
has the disease. The test is quite accurate. In particular, we know that (i) the probability that the
test result is positive (suggesting the person has the disease), given that the person does not have the
disease, is only 2 percent; and (ii) the probability that the test result is negative (suggesting the person
does not have the disease), given that the person has the disease, is only 1 percent.
A random person gets tested for the disease and the result comes back positive. What is the probability
that the person has the disease?

14. I roll a die 18 times. What is the probability that each number appears exactly 3 times?

15. (The matching problem) N guests arrive at a party. Each person is wearing a hat. We collect all hats
and then randomly redistribute the hats, giving each person one of the N hats randomly. What is
the probability that at least one person receives his/her own hat? [Hint: Use the inclusion-exclusion
principle.]

16. Three prisoners, A, B, and C, are held in separate cells. Two are to be executed. The warder knows
specifically who is to be executed, and who is to be freed, whereas the prisoners know only that two
are to be executed. Prisoner A reasons as follows: my probability of being freed is clearly 1/3 until
I receive further information. However, it is clear that at least one of B and C will be executed, so I
will ask the warder to name one prisoner other than myself who is to be executed. Once I know which
of B and C is to be executed, either I will go free or the other, unnamed, prisoner will go free, with
equal probability. Hence, by asking the name of another prisoner to be executed, I raise my chances
of survival from 1/3 to 1/2. Investigate As reasoning. [Hint: find the conditional probability that A is
freed, given that the warder names B to be executed.]

17. (Gambler’s ruin problem) Two gamblers, A and B, bet on the outcomes of successive flips of a coin.
On each flip, if the coin comes up heads, A collects 1 unit from B, whereas if it comes up tails, A pays
1 unit to B. They continue to do this until one of them runs out of money. If it is assumed that the
successive flips of the coin are independent and each flip results in a head with probability p, what is
the probability that A ends up with all the money if he starts with i units and B starts with N − i
units?