ENEE/ENMG 672 Homework 8

(Ch 9: Analytic Probability)

Grade: 10+15+15+15+15+15+15 = 100 + 10 EC

Homework Questions:

Chapter 9

1) (10) Consider rolling a 4 sided dice.

a. (1) What is the probability of rolling a 1, 2, 3, and 4?
Answer: Possible outcomes are 1, 2, 3, and 4 in a 4 sided dice. Probability of
each outcome = ¼.
b. (1) Does this produce a PMF or a PDF?
Answer: it produces PMF as these are discrete values.

c. (1) Is the value rolled a continuous or discrete random variable?

Answer: It is a discrete random variable.

d. (2) What is the mean? Show your calculation.

Answer: the mean is (1+2+3+4)/4 = 2.5

e. (2) What is the standard deviation? Show your calculation

Answer: SD =sqrt(2.5) = 1.581

f. (2) What is the probability that you will roll a value of 2 or greater? Show
your calculation.
Answer: P(2) = ¼
P(3) = 1/3, p(4) = ¼
 P(2 or more) = ¼ + ¼+ ¼ =3/4 = 0.75

g. (1) This problem is an example of using what is the specific type of

probability distribution?
Answer: since it is a greater than function, then it becomes a continuous
probability distribution

2) (15) Suppose you know that 60% of the population of given city is Irish. Consider a
room of 10 people drawn at random from this city.
a. (3) What is the expectation value for the number of people in the room that
will be Irish? Show your calculation.
Answer: probability that a person is Irish = 2/3. Since there are 10 persons so
the expected value E(x) = 10*2/3 =6.67

b. (3) What is the standard deviation? Show your calculation.

Answer: Standard Deviation = Sqrt (Σ(x – E(x))2*p
SD =10*(5.67)2)*0.67 = 14.676
 c. (3) What is the probability that exactly 6 of the people in the room will be
Irish? Show your calculation.
Answer: the probability that exactly 6 of the people in the room will be Irish
can be estimated through binomial table:
Here N=6, n=6, p=0.6 & q=0.4
N!
P(=6) = (pk)(qN-k)
k!(N-k)!
N!= 720; k!=720 (N=k), (N-k)!=1, pk = 0.04667, qn-k=1
 P(=6)=0.0466
Thus,
P(=6) = 0.0466=0.0467

d. (3) What is the probability that 3 or more people in the room will be Irish?
Show your calculation.
Answer:
Probability of 3 or more can be estimated in same manner and the probability
N!
P(>=3) = (pk)(qN-k)
k!(N-k)!

Substituting the values we have

P(>=3) = 0.9877054464

e. (1) This problem is an example of using what is the specific type of

probability distribution?
Answer:
It is a binomial distribution and the formula itself represented the binomial
probabilities

f. (2) Is it a continuous or discrete distribution? A PMF or a PDF?

Answer: there are examples of both -- continuous & discrete distribution and
we have examples of both PMF & PDF.

3) (15) Consider a production line. Suppose that on average one observes 1 defect every
2 hours.
a. (3) What is the probability that you will see exactly 6 defects over the course
of 12 hours? Show your calculation.
Answer: we will used the Poisson probability function

(e—m)(mk)
T
P(k out of n) =
k!
where:
e = the base of the natural logarithms; and
m = the mean of the Poisson distribution;

M can be evaluated as average one observes 1 defect every 2 hours. So in 12

hours average 6 defects will occur. So m=6.
We have to evaluate of k=6.
Substituting these values in the formula we have
P(x=6)= 0.16062

b. (3) What is the average number of defects you expect to see over 12 hours?
Show your calculation.
Answer: we already evaluated that m=6.
c. (3) What is the standard deviation of defects over a 12 hour period? Show
your calculation.
Answer:
µ=λσ=√λ
µ = λ=6
 σ=√6
 σ = 2.4495
d. (3) What is the probability that there will be 4 or more defects over 12 hours?
Show your calculation.
Answer: We can use the same formula to evaluate and we have

(e—m)(mk)
T
P(k out of n) =
k!
M=6, k=4
 P(k>=4)= 0.84879

e. (1) This problem is an example of using what is the specific type of

probability distribution?
Answer: This problem uses the Poisson Distribution.
f. (2) Is it a continuous or discrete distribution? A PMF or a PDF?
It is only a continuous distribution in this case and it used a PMF.

4) (15) Consider a type of light bulb that is characterized as having a mean time between
failures (MBTF) of 100 hrs. (Hint: Generally, reliability theory models the probability
that an item will fail in less than time t as an exponential cumulative distribution, i.e.,
P(Tfail<t) = exp(-t/MTBF).)
a. (3) What is the expected (mean) life (Tml) for this type of light bulb? Show
your calculation.
Answer: For exponential distribution, MTBF is Mean life () is average
lifetime of all items considered.
Thus, mean) life = 100 hours.
 b. (4) What is the standard deviation associated with Tml? Show your
calculation.
Answer: in an exponential cumulative distribution, i.e., P(Tfail<t) = exp(-
t/MTBF).), both Mean and Standard Deviation become 1/MTBF
 SD = MTBF =100 hours
c. (4) What is the probability that the light bulb will last longer than 100 hours?
Show your calculation/rationale.
Answer: P(Tfail<t) = exp(-t/MTBF).)
 P=exp(-t/100)
 P=exp(-100/100)=exp(-1)= 0.3679
Thus probability that it will last longer than 100 hours = 1-p=0.6321

d. (3) Are you using a continuous or discrete distribution? Is it based on a PMF

or a PDF? Explain
Answer: Definitely we are using the continuous distribution and it is based on
a probability density function (PDF), as there is a continuous random
variable, which is a function. Its value at any point is the possible value taken
by the random variable and may be interpreted as having the relative
probability.

5) (15) Suppose that the potential return on an investment follows a normal distribution
with a mean of $1000 and a standard deviation of $100.
a. (5) What is the probability that the return on the investment will be > $1200.
Explain how you determined this.
Answer:

P= { 1/[ σ * sqrt(2π) ] } * e-(x - μ) /2σ

2 2

where μ is the mean, σ is the standard deviation, π is approximately 3.14159,

and e is approximately 2.71828. substituting mean = 100 and σ = 1000, we
have
P= 0.0228
b. (5) Draw an uncertain event that represents this case.
Answer:
 c. (5) Are you using a continuous or discrete distribution? Is it based on a PMF
or a PDF? Explain.
Answer: It is a PDF. The normal equation is the probability density function
for the above normal distribution.

Some Other Potential Test Questions:

1) When reporting a mean (or expectation value), what other quantity should be
reported? Why?
2) Draw an uncertain event that is characterized by the discrete uniform distribution with
four potential outcomes (A, B, C, D).
3) Draw an uncertain event that is characterized by the binomial distribution associated
with a sample size of N = 4. Hint: Express in terms of the number of “successes”
found in a sample.
4) Draw an uncertain event that is characterized by the Poisson distribution? Hint:
Express in terms of the number of errors found on a page of text.
5) Draw an uncertain event that is characterized by an exponential distribution.
6) Why would it be appropriate to model the distribution of the heights of people as a
normal distribution? Where would this breakdown?
7) What is the Central Limit Theorem? What does it tell you about how the normal
distribution and the binomial distribution are related?
8) What does it mean to “discretize” a distribution? Provide an example.
9) What does it mean to “coarse grain” a distribution? Provide an example.
10) (15) Consider the continuous uniform distribution.
a. (2) Why would you use this to model the distribution of ages of people
between the ages of 0 and 50 years in the United States?
b. (2) Why would this likely not be a good distribution to use beyond about 50
years of age?
c. (2) Is this distribution characterized as a PMF or PDF? Explain.
d. (2) What is the mean age? Show your calculation.
e. (3) What is the standard deviation? Show your calculation.
f. (2) What is the probability that a person will be exactly 30 years of age?
Explain your answer.
g. (2) What is the probability that a person will be between ages 30 and 31?
Show your calculation.