9 17-02-2012

Assignment 5
1. A man aiming at a target receives 10 points if his shot is within 1 inch of the target, 5 points if it is between 1 and 3 inches of the target, and 3 points if it is between 3 and 5 inches of the target. Find the expected number of points scored if the distance from the shot to the target is uniformly distributed between 0 and 10. 2. Suppose that X is a normal random variable with mean 5. If P {X > 9} = .2, approximately what is Var(X)? 3. Let X be a normal random variable with mean 12 and variance 4. Find the value of c such that P {X > c} = .10. 4. Suppose that the height, in inches, of a 25-year-old man is a normal random variable with parameters = 71 and 2 = 6.25. What percentage of 25-year-old men are over 6 feet, 2 inches tall? What percentage of men in the 6-footer club are over 6 feet, 5 inches? 5. One thousand independent rolls of a fair die will be made. Compute an approximation to the probability that the number 6 will appear between 150 and 200 times inclusively. If the number 6 appears exactly 200 times, nd the probability that the number 5 will appear less than 150 times. 6. Each item produced by a certain manufacturer is, independently, of acceptable quality with probability .95. Approximate the probability that at most 10 of the next 150 items produced are unacceptable. 7. Twelve percent of the population is left handed. Approximate the probability that there are at least 20 left-handers in a school of 200 students. State your assumptions. 8. A model for the movement of a stock supposes that if the present price of the stock is s, then, after one period, it will be either us with probability p or ds with probability 1 p. Assuming that successive movements are independent, approximate the probability that the stocks price will be up at least 30 percent after the next 1000 periods if u = 1.012, d = 0.990, and p = .52. 9. (a) A re station is to be located along a road of length A, A < q. If res occur at points uniformly chosen on (0, A), where should the station be located so as to minimize the expected distance from the re? That is, choose a so as to minimize E[|X a|] when X is uniformly distributed over (0, A). (b) Now suppose that the road is of innite lengthstretching from point 0 outward to q. If the distance of a re from point 0 is exponentially distributed with rate , where should the re station now be located? That is, we want to minimize E[|X a|], where X is now exponential with rate . 10. The time (in hours) required to repair a machine is an exponentially distributed random variable with parameter = 1/2. What is (a) the probability that a repair time exceeds 2 hours? (b) the conditional probability that a repair takes at least 10 hours, given that its duration exceeds 9 hours? 11. The number of years a radio functions is exponentially distributed with parameter = 1/8 . If you buy a used radio, what is the probability that it will be working after an additional 8 years? 12. An auto driver gures that the total number of thousands of miles that an auto can be driven before it would need to be junked is an exponential random variable with parameter 1/20 . There is a used car which has been driven only 10,000 miles. If the auto driver purchases the car, what is the probability that he would get at least 20,000 additional miles out of it? Repeat under the assumption that the lifetime mileage of the car is not exponentially distributed, but rather is (in thousands of miles) uniformly distributed over (0, 40). 13. The lung cancer hazard rate (t) of a t-year-old male smoker is such that (t) = .027 + .00025(t 40)2 , t 40. Assuming that a 40-year-old male smoker survives all other hazards, what is the probability that he survives to (a) age 50 and (b) age 60 without contracting lung cancer? 14. Suppose that the life distribution of an item has the hazard rate function (t) = t3 , t > 0. What is the probability that (a) the item survives to age 2? (b) the items lifetime is between .4 and 1.4? (c) a 1-year-old item will survive to age 2? 15. Let X be a random variable that takes on values between 0 and c. That is, 2 P {0 X c} = 1. Show that V ar(X) c4 .

10 16. Let f (x) denote the probability density function of a normal random variable with mean and variance 2 . Show that and + are points of inection of this function. That is, show that f (x) = 0 when x = or x = + . 17. Let Z be a standard normal random variable Z, and let g be a dierentiable function with derivative g . (a) Show that E[g (Z)] = E[Zg(Z)]. (b) Show that E[Z n+1 ] = nE[Z n1 ]. (c) Find E[Z 4 ]. 18. The median of a continuous random variable having distribution function F is that value m such that F (m) = 1/2. That is, a random variable is just as likely to be larger than its median as it is to be smaller. Find the median of X if X is (a) uniformly distributed over (a, b); (b) normal with parameters , 2 ; (c) exponential with rate . 19. The mode of a continuous random variable having density f is the value of x for which f (x) attains its maximum. Compute the mode of X in cases (a), (b), and (c) in the above problem. 20. If X is an exponential random variable with parameter , and c > 0, show that cX is exponential with parameter /c. 21. Compute the hazard rate function of X when X is uniformly distributed over (0, a). 22. If X has hazard rate function X (t), compute the hazard rate function of aX where a is a positive constant. k! 23. If X is an exponential random variable with mean 1/, show that E[X k ] = k for k = 1, 2, .