Practical Exercises
Practical Exercises
1. Potassium blood levels in healthy humans are normally distributed with a mean of
17.0 mg/100 ml, and standard deviation of 1.0 mg/100 ml. Elevated levels of
potassium indicate an electrolyte balance problem, such as may be caused by
Addisons disease. However, a test for potassium level should not cause too many
false positives. What level of potassium should we use so that only 2.5 % of
healthy individuals are classified as abnormally high?
2. For a particular type of wool the number of crimps per 10cm follows a normal
distribution with mean 15.1 and standard deviation 4.79.
(a) What proportion of wool would have a crimp per 10 cm measurement of 6 or
less? (b) If more than 7% of the wool has a crimp per 10 cm measurement of 6 or
less, then the wool is unsatisfactory for a particular processing. Is the wool
satisfactory for this processing?
3. The finish times for marathon runners during a race are normally distributed with
a mean of 195 minutes and a standard deviation of 25 minutes.
a) What is the probability that a runner will complete the marathon within 3 hours?
b) Calculate to the nearest minute, the time by which the first 8% runners have
completed the marathon. c) What proportion of the runners will complete the
marathon between 3 hours and 4 hours?
4. The download time of a resource web page is normally distributed with a mean of
6.5 seconds and a standard deviation of 2.3 seconds.
a) What proportion of page downloads take less than 5 seconds? b) What is the
probability that the download time will be between 4 and 10 seconds?
c)
How many seconds will it take for 35% of the downloads to be completed?
2 .Inland Revenue audits 5% of all companies every year. The companies selected
for auditing in any one year are independent of the previous years selection.
a) What is the probability that the company Ross Waste Disposal will be selected
for auditing exactly twice in the next 5 years?
b) What is the probability that the company will be audited exactly twice in the next
2 years?
c) What is the exact probability that this company will be audited at least once in
the next 4 years?
3 .The probability that a driver must stop at any one traffic light coming to Lincoln
University is 0.2. There are 15 sets of traffic lights on the journey. a) What is the
probability that a student must stop at exactly 2 of the 15 sets of traffic lights? b)
What is the probability that a student will be stopped at 1 or more of the 15 sets of
traffic lights?