Statistics 2 -

Additional Questions on Probability 1

1. A local fraternity is conducting a raffle where 50 tickets were to be sold one per
customer. There are three prizes to be awarded. If the four organisers of the raffle each
buy one ticket, what is the probability that the four organisers
a)
b)
c)
d)

win all of the prizes?

win exactly two of the prizes?
win exactly one of the prizes?
win none of the prizes?

2. A group of three undergraduate and five graduate students are available to fill certain
student government posts. If four students are to be randomly selected from this group,
find the probability that exactly two undergraduates will be among the four chosen.
3. Consider the following events in the toss of a single die.
A: Observe an odd number.
B: Observe an even number.
C: Observe a 1 or 2.
a) Are A and B independent events?
b) Are A and C independent events?
4. Three brands of coffee X, Y and Z, are to be ranked according to taste by a judge. The
following events are defined:
A: Brand X is preferred to Y.
B: Brand X is ranked the best.
C: Brand X is ranked the second best.
D: Brand X is ranked the third best.
If the judge actually has no taste preference and randomly assigns ranks to the brands, is
the event A independent of events B, C, and D?
5. If two events A and B are such that P(A) = 0.5, P(B) = 0.3, and P(A B) = 0.1, find the
following:
 |   | 
|  |   | 

6. Suppose that A and B are independent events such that the probability that neither occurs
is a and the probability of B is b. Show that,
 

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S Kumar

Statistics 2 -
7. Let A, B and C be events such that    and   0. Construct an example to
show that it is possible that |  |.
8. The following table shows proportions of adults in non-metropolitan areas, categorized as
to whether they were readers or non-readers of newspapers and whether or not they voted
for the last election.
Voted

Readers Non-readers

Yes

0.63

0.13

No

0.14

0.10

(a) What is the probability that a randomly chosen adult from this population voted?
(b) What is the probability that a randomly chosen adult from this population read
newspapers?
(c) What is the probability that a randomly chosen adult who did not read newspapers,
from this population, did not vote?
9. For each of the statements below say whether the statement is true or false explaining
your answer.
a) Let A and B be two events such that 0 < P(B) < 1. If |  |    1, then
P(A) = 1.
b) There exist dependent events A and B such that    1     .
c) Let A, B, C be events. If A is independent of B and B is independent of C then A is
independent of C.
d) If A and B are independent, B and C are independent, and A and C are independent,
then A,B and C are independent.
e) If P(A) = P(B) = P(C) = 0.1, then P(ABC) 0.3.
f) If A,B and C are independent, then A B C =
10. The administration office has received 12 nominations from which to designate 4 student
representatives to serve on a campus curriculum committee. Among the nominees, 5 are
economics majors and 7 management majors.
If the selection process were random, what is the probability that one economics major
and three management majors would be selected?
11. A batch of 18 items contains four defectives. If three items are sampled at random, find
the probability of the following events.
(a) A = [none of the defectives appear]
(b) B = [exactly two defectives appear]
12. Prove the following:
(a) If |  |  , then A and B are independent.
(b) If |  | and |    |  , then   .
2

S Kumar

Statistics 2 -

13. You are responsible for detecting the source of the error when the computer system fails.
From your analysis you know that the source of error is either the disk drive, the
computer memory, or the operating system. You know that 50% of the errors are disk
errors, 30% are computer memory errors, and the remainder are operating system errors.
From the component performance standards you know that when a disk error occurs the
probability of failure is 0.6, when a computer memory error occurs the probability of
failure is 0.7, and when an operating system error occurs the probability of failure is 0.4.
Given the information from the component performance standards,
(a) what is the probability of disk error given that a failure occurred?
(b) what is the probability of either disk error or operating system error given that a
failure occurred?

14. A manufacturer produces drink bottles. He uses three machines, A, B and C, which
produce 20%, 30% and 50% of the bottles respectively. 4% of the bottles produced by
machine A are defective, 5% of the bottles produced by machine B are defective and 2%
of the bottles produced by machine C are defective.
One bottle is selected from a lot produced on a day and it is found to be defective.
(a) What is the probability that the defective bottle was produced by A?
(b) What is the probability that the defective bottle was produced by B?
(c) What is the probability that the defective bottle was produced by C?
15. A stock market analyst examined the prospects of the shares of a large number of
corporations. When the performance of these stocks was investigated one year later, it
turned out that 25% performed much better than the market average, 25% much worse,
and the remaining 50% about the same as the average. Forty percent of the stocks that
turned out to do much better than the market were rated good buys by the analyst, as
were 20% of those that did about as well as the market and 10% of those that did much
worse.
What is the probability that a stock rated a good buy by the analyst performed much
better than the market average?
16. An insurance salesman visits one and only one of three areas on any day. He visits area A
with probability 0.3, area B with probability 0.3 and area C with probability 0.4. The
probability of making at least one sale on any day of visiting area A is 0.6. The
probability of making at least one sale on any day of visiting area B is 0.5 and the
probability of making at least one sale on any day of visiting area C is 0.1.
a) A sale was made yesterday. What is the probability that he visited B?
b) Sales were made yesterday and also the day before. What is the probability that he
visited the same area on both days?

S Kumar

Statistics 2 -
17. A mail-order house employs three stock clerks, U, V, and W, who pull items from shelves
and assemble them for subsequent verification and packaging. U makes a mistake in an
order (gets a wrong item or the wrong quantity) one time in a hundred, V makes a mistake
in an order five times in a hundred, and W makes a mistake in an order three times in a
hundred. If U, V, and W fill, respectively, 30, 40, and 30 percent of all orders, what are
the probabilities that
(a) a mistake will be made in an order;
(b) if a mistake is made in an order, the order was filled by U;
(c) if a mistake is made in an order, the order was filled by V?

18. Of the travellers arriving at a small airport, 60% fly on major airlines, 30% fly on
privately owned planes, and the remainder fly on commercially owned planes not
belonging to major airline. Of those travelling on major airplanes, 50% are travelling for
business reasons, whereas 50% of those arriving on private planes and 90% of those
arriving on other commercially owned planes are travelling for business reasons. Suppose
that we randomly select one person arriving at this airport. What is the probability that the
person
(a) is travelling on business?
(b) is travelling for business on a privately owned plane?
(c) arrived on a privately owned plane, given that the person is travelling for business
reasons?
(d) is travelling on business, given that the person is flying on a commercially owned
plane?
19. There are three urns A, B and C. Urn A contains 2 white and 1 black balls. Urn B
contains 3 white and 2 black balls. Urn C contains 2 white and 2 black balls.

One ball is drawn at random form urn A and out into the urn B. Then a ball is drawn from urn
B and put into urn C. Then a ball is drawn from urn C.
(a) Find the probability that the ball is white.
(b) If the ball drawn from urn C is white, what is the probability that the balls drawn from
urn A and urn B are the same colours?
(c) If the ball drawn from urn C is black, what is the probability that the balls selected
from urn A and urn B are different colours?

S Kumar

Statistics 2 -
Answers:
1. 
2.

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4900 4900 980 980

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4.  

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7. Think of events A, B and C when a die is rolled.
8. 0.76  0.77 
0.4348
9 True; Use mathematical proof
9  False; Assume A and B to be dependent and prove that the equation is wrong.
9
 False; Give a counter example.
9 False; A counter example is given in my lecture notes page 13.
9 True; Use the expansion of PA B Cfor the proof
9O False; By the definition of independence of three events.
10. 0.3535
11.  0.4461  0.1029
13.  0.5085   0.6441
14.  0.2424   0.4546 
 0.3030
15.

4
9

16. 

15
 0.4127
37

17. 0.032   0.0938 

 0.625
18. 0.54   0.15 
 0.2778  0.9
19. 0.5222   0.6383 
 0.4186

S Kumar