Questions for practice

1. In a factory there are two machines producing 30% and 70% respectively of the total
output. Out of the items produced by the first machine 4% are defectives, whereas out of the
items produced by the second machine 6% are defectives. An item is drawn at random from
the production line and it is found to be defective. What is the conditional probability that this
item was produced by the second machine ?

Ans: 7/9
2. A business school conducts an examination on quantitative methods in two rounds. Each
student must appear in the first round of the examination, and any such student is assigned one of
the four letter grades A, B, C or F, on the basis of his/her performance at this round. It is known
that 10%, 30%, 40% and 20% of the students get A, B, C and F grades respectively, at the first
round.
If a student gets an A or a B grade at the first round then this is recorded as his/her final grade.
Otherwise, he/she has the option of sitting for the second round of the examination for possible
grade improvement.
Among the students securing a C grade at the first round, 40% do not opt for the second round of
examination and for them the final grade is recorded as C. On the other hand, among those who
get a C grade at the first round and decide to sit for the second round, 10%, 10%, 50% and 30%
get A, B, C and F grades respectively, at the second round.
All those securing an F grade at the first round sit for the second round of examination and, among
them, 5%, 10%, 40% and 45% get A, B, C and F grades respectively, at the second round.
As per the rules of the business school, the grades at the second round are converted to final grades
using a formula which is summarized as follows:
Grade in the second round A B C F
Final grade B C C F
(a) What is the probability that a randomly chosen student sits for the second round of the
examination?
(b) What is the probability that a randomly chosen student gets a final grade C ?
(c) Given that a randomly chosen student has a final grade B, what is the conditional probability
that he/she did not sit for the second round of examination?
(d) Given that a randomly chosen student has a final grade F, what is the conditional probability
that he/she got an F grade in the first round of examination?

Ans: (a) 0.44, (b) 0.404, (c) 0.8982, (d) 0.5556

3. A production process involves three machines A, B and C, which produce 50%, 30% and 20%
respectively, of the total output. Out of the items produced by machine A, 10% fail in a quality
control test. The corresponding figures for machines B and C are 20% and 30% respectively. All
items passing the quality control test are directly acceptable. On the other hand, items failing in
the quality control test are further processed and thus 40%, 50% and 60% of them turn out to be
marginally acceptable, depending on whether they came from machines A, B and C respectively,
e.g., out of the items, that are produced by machine A and that fail in the quality control test, 40%
eventually turn out to be marginally acceptable, and so on.
(a) Find the probability that a randomly chosen item from the production process is found to be
directly acceptable.
(b) Find the probability that a randomly chosen item from the production process turns out to be
marginally acceptable.
(c) Given that a randomly chosen item from the production process has failed in the quality
control test, what is the conditional probability that it turns out to be marginally acceptable?
(d) Given that a randomly chosen item from the production process has turned out to be
marginally acceptable, what is the conditional probability that it was produced by machine A?
(e) Given that a randomly chosen item was not produced by machine B, what is the conditional
probability that it turns out to be marginally acceptable?
Ans: (a) 0.83, (b) 0.086, (c) 0.506, (d) 0.232, (e)
0.08
4. In 2008, there were three brands A, B and C of a product having market shares 20%, 30% and
50% respectively among a group of 1000 consumers. A new brand D came into the market in
2009. The following are known about the behavior of these 1000 consumers:
(i) Among the consumers of brands A, B and C in 2008, respectively 50%, 40% and 30% switch
over to brand D in 2009. These people continue to use brand D till the end of 2009, but eventually
some of them start disliking brand D. As a result, among the converts to D from A, B and C,
respectively 60%, 30% and 40% return to their original brands on January 1, 2010.
(ii) Among the three brands A, B and C, there is no change of loyalty in 2009 (i.e., there is no
conversion from brand A to brand B, and so on).
(iii) Those who do not change brand loyalty in 2009 continue with their original brands on
January1, 2010.
Direction for parts (a)-(c): On December 31, 2009, one of the 1000 consumers is chosen at
random.
(a) What is the probability that the chosen person is a consumer of brand D?
(b) Given that the chosen person is not a consumer of brand D, what is the conditional probability
that he/she was a consumer of brand C in 2008 ?
(c) Given that the chosen person is not a consumer of brand C, what is the conditional probability
that he/she will be a consumer of brand A on January 1, 2010 ?
Direction for parts (d)-(f): On January 1, 2010, one of the 1000 consumers is chosen at random.
(d) What is the probability that the chosen person is a consumer of brand D?
(e) What is the probability that the chosen person is a consumer of brand C ?
(f) Given that the chosen person is a consumer of brand A or C, what is the conditional
probability that he/she did not change brand loyalty in 2009 ?
Ans: (a) 0.37, (b) 0.5556, (c) 0.246, (d) 0.214, (e) 0.410, (f)
0.789
5. It is known that 50% of the passengers of an airline are Indians. The rest are obviously
foreigners. The passengers arrive at the check-in counter at a random order. Consider the first four
passengers who check-in for the flight. If the first passenger is an Indian then we write I for him
or her; otherwise we write F. The same thing is done for the second, third and fourth passengers.
This gives a sequence of length four consisting of I and F. For example, if all the first four
passengers are foreigners then we get FFFF. On the other hand, if the first and fourth passengers
are Indians and the second and the third passengers are foreigners, then we get the sequence IFFI.
In any such sequence, an F-run is an uninterrupted chain of F’s preceded and followed by either I
or nothing. Similarly, an I-run is defined. Let X and Y denote the numbers of F- and I- runs
respectively. Thus with the sequence IFFI, we have X=1 and Y=2 since the first and last members
of the sequence give two I-runs whereas the two middle members yield an F-run. Here are some
more examples corresponding to several other possibilities for the sequence formed by the first
four passengers:

Sequence X Y
FFFF 1 0
IIFF 1 1
FIFI 2 2
Obtain (a) P(X=0 | Y=1), (b) P(X=1 | Y=1) and (c) P(X=2 | Y=1). Ans: 0.1, (b) 0.6,
(c) 0.3
6. The probability distribution of the number of projects executed by a construction company per
year is as follows:

Value 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
2 2 2
Probability k k 7k +k 2k 2k 3k 2k
Here k is a suitable constant. Any year is "unusual" if the number of projects executed, X, is too
large or too small in the sense that |X7| > 2.
(a) Find the probability for any particular year to be "unusual".
(b) Also find the probability that out of four randomly chosen years, no more than one is "unusual".
(c) Find E(X).
Ans: (a) 0.21, (b) 0.8037, (c) 7.82
7. There are three varieties of an insect. These varieties are called A, B and C and they occur in
equal proportion in the nature. An entomologist is conducting research on this insect and is
primarily interested in variety A. He collects the insect one-by-one till an insect of variety A is
obtained. The process, however, is not allowed to continue indefinitely. If an insect of variety A
is not obtained even in four trials, the entomologist stops collecting any more insect. Find the
expected number of insects collected.

Ans: 2.407
8. The profit (in a certain unit) of a business enterprise for a particular year equals the larger root
of the quadratic equation x 2  Ax  B  0 , where A and B are two economic indicators,
about which the following are known:
 A equals either 7 or 8 with respective probabilities 0.4 and 0.6.
 Given A = 7, the possible values of B are 10 or 12 with respective conditional probabilities
0.7 and 0.3.
 Given A = 8, the possible values of B are 12 or 15 with respective conditional probabilities
0.8 and 0.2.
Let Z be the profit for the year.
(a) Obtain the conditional probability P(B = 15 | Z = 5). (b) Calculate E(Z). Ans: (a)
0.3, (b) 5.36
9. (a) The number of patients, say X, arriving at a specialty clinic on a particular day follows the
Poisson distribution with mean two. The clinic can handle at most two such patients. Thus if Y
denotes the number of patients handled by the clinic, then Y = X if X ≤ 2, while Y = 2 if X > 2.
Find the expectation of Y.
(b) Let X be the number of defectives among four items drawn at random from a large lot. The lot
is accepted if X = 0, and rejected if X ≥ 2. If X = 1, then two more items are drawn at random
from the lot. The lot is rejected if both these items are defectives, and accepted otherwise. If 20%
of the items in the lot are defectives, then what is the probability of acceptance of the lot?

Ans: (a) 1.459, (b) 0.8028.

10. The distribution of life (in hours) of a certain kind of electric bulb is known to be
exponential. It is known that any bulb of this kind survives for 100 hours or more with
probability 0.6561. What is the probability for any bulb of this kind to fail within 75 hours?
Ans: 0.271
11. The distribution of scores in a public examination is known to be normal with mean  and
standard deviation  . (i) If 20% of the candidates score over 80 and 30% of the candidates score
below 40, then find the ratio  /  . (ii) If   44 and   7 , then find the probability that among
100 randomly chosen candidates no more than one scores below 29.

Ans: (i) 1.89, (ii) 0.52

12. The market condition in a region can be upbeat, moderate or poor, with respective
probabilities 0.3, 0.5 and 0.2 respectively. The following are known about the profit, say X (in a
certain monetary unit), of a company under various market conditions:
(i) Upbeat: X equals 2, 3 or 4 with respective probabilities 0.2, 0.3 and 0.5;
(ii) Moderate: X equals 1, 2 or 4 with respective probabilities 0.3, 0.5 and 0.2;
(iii) Poor: X equals 1, 2 or 3 with respective probabilities 0.5, 0.3 and 0.2.
If X equals 3 or 4, then the company may be fined by the regulatory authorities for restrictive
trade practices, the amount of fine being 1 monetary unit. If X  3 , then this happens with
probability 0.3, in which case the net profit, say Y (in the same monetary unit as X), equals 2. On
the other hand, if X  4 , then the fine is imposed with probability 0.6, in which case the Y equals
3. Of course, with X = 1 or 2, the question of imposition of a fine does not arise and hence Y
equals X. The same happens if X equals 3 or 4 and no fine is imposed.
(a) Find the probability that the company has to pay a fine.
(b) Obtain the conditional probability P ( X  3 | Y  2).
(c) Given that the market condition was moderate, what is the conditional expectation of Y ?
(d) Find the conditional variance of X given Y  3 . Ans: (a) 0.189, (b) 0.095, (c) 1.98, (d)
0.235
13. A study on a psychological trait, X, affecting consumer behavior is conducted in Jaipur and
Patna. In Jaipur, X is exponentially distributed with mean 3, while in Patna, the distribution of X
is continuous uniform over the range [4, h] , where h is a positive constant.
(a) A person is called hyperactive if his/her X-value exceeds 11. Find the probability that out of
100 randomly chosen people in Jaipur at least two are hyperactive.
(b) If V(X) = 3 in Patna, then find P(X > 0 | – 3 < X < 3) for this city.
Ans: (a) 0.72, (b) 0.4