IEDA 2520 Probability for Engineers Yi Chen
Homework 2
1. For each of the following experiments, describe the sample space.
(a) Toss a coin three times.
(b) Measure the lifetime of a particular brand of light bulb.
2. An elementary school is offering 3 language classes: Spanish, French, and German.
The classes are open to any of the students in the school. Let S denote the event that
student chooses Spanish class, F denote the event that student chooses French class,
G denote the event that student choose German class. Use the operations of union,
intersection, and complementation to describe each of the following events in terms of
S, F and G, draw a Venn diagram, and shade the region corresponding to each one.
(a) A student is chosen, he/she takes only one language class.
(b) A student is chosen, he/she takes Spanish class or takes both French and German
classes.
(You could just draw the plot by hand.)
3. Given three event Ai , for i=1, 2, 3, suppose that P (A1 ) = 0.22, P (A2 ) = 0.25, P (A3 ) =
0.28, P (A1 ∩A2 ) = 0.11, P (A1 ∩A3 ) = 0.05, P (A2 ∩A3 ) = 0.07, P (A1 ∩A2 ∩A3 ) = 0.01.
Compute the probability of each event:
(a) A1 ∪ A2
(b) Ac1 ∩ Ac2 , hint: consider complementary event
(c) A1 ∪ A2 ∪ A3
(d) Ac1 ∩ Ac2 ∩ Ac3
(e) (Ac1 ∩ Ac2 ) ∪ A3
4. A group of 20 students consists of 3 PhDs, 7 Mphils, 10 undergraduates. An event of
5 people is chosen randomly from this group. What is the probability that at least one
of three levels of students is not chosen for the event?
5. There are 100 packages, each containing 10 electrical components. Assume 70 of them
are those packages each containing only 1 defective components (among the 10 compo-
nents); 30 of them are those packages each containing 4 defective components (among
the 10 components). Suppose a potential buyer randomly pick one package, then
randomly pick 3 components in this package. If all these three components are non-
defective, he will purchase these 100 packages. What is the probability that he will
purchase them?
1
6. Two fair dice are rolled. What is the conditional probability that at least one lands on
6 given that the dice land on different numbers?
7. Two cards are randomly chosen without replacement from an ordinary deck of 52 cards.
Let B be the event that both cards are aces, let As be the event that the ace of spades
is chosen, and let A be the event that at least one ace is chosen. Find
(a) P (B|As )
(b) P (B|A)
8. Urn 1 contains 2 white and 4 red balls. Urn 2 contains 1 white and 1 red ball. A ball
is randomly chosen from urn 1 and put into urn 2. Then a ball is randomly selected
from urn 2. What is
(a) the probability that the ball selected from urn 2 is white?
(b) the conditional probability that the transferred ball was white, given that a white
ball is selected from urn 2?
9. An ectopic pregnancy is twice as likely to develop when the pregnant woman is a
smoker as it is when she is a nonsmoker. If 32 percent of women of childbearing age
are smokers, what percentage of women having ectopic pregnancies are smokers?
10. Suppose that 5 percent of men and .25 percent of women are color blind. A color-
blind person is chosen at random. What is the probability of this person being male?
Assume that there are an equal number of males and females. What if the population
consisted of twice as many males as females?
