STA 32101: R. Variables F.

Chamera March 2023

(
k if a < x < b
1. The p.d.f of a continuous random variable X is f (x) =
0 otherwise.
1
Show that k = .
b−a
2. A humane society reports that 19% of all pet dogs were adopted
from an animal shelter. Assuming the truth of this assertion, find
the probability that in a random sample of 80 pet dogs, between
15% and 20% were adopted from a shelter

3. A state insurance commission estimates that 13% of all motorists

in its state are uninsured. Suppose this proportion is valid. Find
the probability that in a random sample of 50 motorists, at least 5
will be uninsured.

4. Suppose a population has a mean of 3 and standard deviation of 8.

If a random sample of n = 36 is selected, what is the probability
that the sample mean is between 7.8 and 8.2?

5. The heights of a population of women are normally distributed

with mean µ cm and standard deviation σ cm. It is known that
30% of the women are taller than 172 cm and 5% are shorter than
154 cm. Show that µ = 154 + 1.6449σ. Obtain the second equation
and find the values of µ and σ.

6. Flaws in a carpet tend to occur randomly and independently at

a rate of 1 every 270 square feet. What is the probability that a
carpet that is 7 by 13 feet contains no flaws?

7. The weight, Y grams, of soup put into a carton by machine B is

normally distributed with mean µ grams and standard deviation
σ grams. Given that P (Y < 160) = 0.99 and P (Y > 152) = 0.90,
find the value of µ and the value of σ.
STA 32101: R. Variables F. Chamera March 2023

8. A car insurance broker found that the number of policy sales follows
a Poisson distributed with an average of 3 car insurance policies
sold per week. Calculate the probability that in a given week he
will sell at least 1 policy.

9. The proportion of a population with a characteristic of interest is

p = 0.37. Find the mean and standard deviation of the sample
proportion p̂ obtained from random samples of size 1,600.

10. Random samples of size 225 are drawn from a population in which
the proportion with the characteristic of interest is 0.25. Decide
whether or not the sample size is large enough to assume that the
sample proportion p̂ is normally distributed.

11. Suppose there is a disease, whose average incidence is 2 per million

people. What is the probability that a city of 4 million people has
an average of at least three incidences?

12. An online shop sells a computer game at an average rate of 1 per

day. Find the probability that the shop sells more than 10 games
in 7 days.

13. Patients arrive at a hospital accident and emergency department at

random at a rate of 6 per hour. Find the probability that, during
any 90 minute period, the number of patients arriving at hospital
accident and emergency department is exactly 7.

14. Suppose that 8% of all males suffer some form of color blindness.
Find the probability that in a random sample of 250 men at least
10% will suffer some form of color blindness. First verify that the
sample is sufficiently large to use the normal distribution.

15. A customer help center receives on average 3.5 calls every hour.
Find probability that it receives at most 4 calls for half an hour?

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STA 32101: R. Variables F. Chamera March 2023

16. The weight, in grams, of beans in a tin is normally distributed with

mean µ and standard deviation 7.8. Given that 10% of tins contain
less than 200 g,
(a) find the value of µ.
(b) find the percentage of tins that contain more than 225 g of
beans.
(c) The machine settings are adjusted so that the weight, in grams,
of beans in a tin is normally distributed with mean 205 and
standard deviation σ. Given that 98% of tins contain between
200 g and 210 g find the value of σ.
17. A random variable X has the binomial distribution with n = 12
and probability of success p
(a) Given that P (X = 0) = 0.05, find the value of p to 3 decimal
places.
(b) Given that the variance of X is 1.92, find the possible values
of p.
18. The probability of a telesales representative making a sale on a
customer call is 0.15. Representatives are required to make a mean
of at least 5 sales each day. Find the least number of calls each
day a representative should make to achieve this requirement.
19. A factory produces components of which 1% are defective. The
components are packed in boxes of 10. A box is selected at random.
Find probability that there are 2 defective components in the box.
20. Let X bea continuous
 random variable with p.d.f
x2 2x + 3 if − 1 < x < 1 2
f (x) = 2 If Y = + 3, find
X
0 otherwise.

V ar[Y ].

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STA 32101: R. Variables F. Chamera March 2023

21. The table below shows probability distribution function for a ran-
dom variable X.

x 0 1 2 3
P (X = x) 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4

Find E[X] and V ar[X].

22. The length of time, L hours, that a phone will work before it needs
charging is normally distributed with a mean of 100 hours and a
standard deviation of 15 hours.
(a) Find P (L > 127).
(b) Find the value of d such that P (L < d) = 0.10.

23. Most graduate schools of business require applicants for admission

to take the Graduate Management Admission Council’s GMAT ex-
amination. Scores on the GMAT are roughly normally distributed
with a mean of 527 and a standard deviation of 112. What is the
probability of an individual scoring above 500 on the GMAT?

24. The probability distribution function of a discrete random variable

is shown below.

x 0 2
P (X = x) a 1 − a

(a) Find E[X] in terms of a.

(b) Show that V ar[X] = 4a(1 − a).

25. Adult marmots tend to have a weight that’s normally distributed

with mean 25 and standard deviation 5. What’s the probability
that a randomly chosen marmot weights over 32?

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STA 32101: R. Variables F. Chamera March 2023

26. A poll found that for those Malawians who have lost weight, 31%
believed the most effective strategy involved exercise. What is the
probability that from random sample of 300 Malawians the sample
proportion falls between 29% and 33%?

27. A certain birth defect occurs in 1 of every 10000 births.

(a) In the next 5,000 births at a major hospital, what is the prob-
ability that at least one baby will have the defect?
(b) What assumptions are required to calculate this probability?

28. Government regulations indicate that the total weight of cargo in a

certain kind of airplane cannot exceed 330 kg. On a particular day
a plane is loaded with 100 boxes of goods. If the weight distribu-
tion for individual boxes is normal with mean 3.2 kg and standard
deviation 7 kg, what is the probability that the regulations will
NOT be met?

29. The Edwards’s Theater chain has studied its movie customers to
determine how much money they spend on concessions. The study
revealed that the spending distribution is approximately normally
distributed with a mean of K4.11 and a standard deviation of
K1.37. What percentage of customers will spend less than K3.00
on concessions?

30. Consider five mice from the same litter, all suffering from Vitamin
A deficiency. They are fed a certain dose of carrots. The positive
reaction means recovery from the disease. Assume that the proba-
bility of recovery is 0.73. What is the probability that atleast 3 of
the 5 mice recover.

31. Let X be a binomial random variable with n = 10 and p = 0.4.

Find P (X = 11).

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STA 32101: R. Variables F. Chamera March 2023

32. The random variable X has probability distribution given by

P (X = x) = k(k + 1) for x = 1, 2, 3, 4.

Find the value of k and E[X].

33. The weight, X grams, of soup put in a tin by machine A is normally

distributed with a mean of 160 g and a standard deviation of 5 g.
A tin is selected at random.
(a) Find the probability that this tin contains more than 168 g.
(b) The weight stated on the tin is w grams. Find w such that
P (X < w) = 0.01.

34. The amount of time I spend preparing for each lecture is normal
with mean 80 and standard deviation 6. Different lectures are
independent of each other. What is the probability that I spend
more than 4.5 hours preparing a lecture?

35. Assume that a drug causes a serious side effect at a rate of three
patients per one hundred. What is the probability that atleast one
person will have side effects in a random sample of ten patients
taking the drug?
(x + 3)2

if − 3 ≤ x ≤ −1


16 2



 (6 − 2x


if − 1 ≤ x ≤ 1
36. Show that the function f (x) = 16 2 is a
 (3 − x)
if 1 ≤ x ≤ 3





 16
0 otherwise

p.d.f of a continuous random variable.

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STA 32101: R. Variables F. Chamera March 2023

37. The random variable X has probability distribution given by

P (X = x) = a + bx for x = 1, 2, 3

where a and b are constants.

1 − 6b
(a) Show that a = .
3
5
(b) Find a and b given that E[X] = .
3
38. Forty percent of business travellers carry a laptop. In a sample of
15 business travelers, what is the probability that 12 of the travelers
will not have a laptop?

39. In a random sample of 1000 students, 80% were in favour of longer

hours at the school library. Find the standard error of the sample
proportion.

40. A random sample of 100 observations is to be drawn from a pop-

ulation with a mean of 40 and a standard deviation of 25. Find
probability that the mean of the sample will exceed 45.

41. Among 28 professors of LUANAR, 18 like pizza. If 5 of these

professors are selected at random, what is the probability that
atleast 3 of them do not like pizza?

42. The mean wage per hour for all 5000 employees who work at a large
company is K27.50, and the standard deviation is K3.70. Let X̄ be
the mean wage per hour for a random sample of certain employees
selected from this company. Find the mean and standard deviation
of X̄ for a sample size of 75.

43. Is it unusual to see less than 3 heads in 12 flips of a coin? Why?

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STA 32101: R. Variables F. Chamera March 2023

44. The probability distribution of a discrete random variable X is

given by

P (X = x) = k(6x2 − x3 ) for x = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 .
1
(a) Show that k = .
105
(b) Show the probability distribution of X on a suitable diagram.
(c) Find P (2 ≤ X < 4).
(d) Calculate the expectation and variance of X.
(
x2 if − 1 < x < 1
45. Let g(x) = Find c such that f (x) = cg(x)
0 otherwise.
is a p.d.f of a continuous random variable.
46. Let f (x) be −2X from −1 ≤ x ≤ 0 and 0 elsewhere else. Find the
standard deviation of this distribution.
47. In a box of 20 umbrellas, 2 are defective. If you sample 5 umbrellas
randomly without replacement, what is the probability of at least
one defective?
48. The random variable X has probability distribution which is given
in the table below.

x -1 0 1 2 3
P (X = x) p p 0.2 0.15 0.15

Find the values of p and q, V ar[X] and E[2X − 4].

49. Given a normal distribution with µ = 50 and σ = 4, find probabil-
ity that X̄ is above 50.1 if samples of size 100 are drawn from this
population.

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STA 32101: R. Variables F. Chamera March 2023

50. A biologist examines frogs for a genetic trait he suspects might be

due to contaminated water. Normally the trait examined presents
itself on average in 1 out of 8 frogs in the wild. If the frequency
of this trait has not changed and he captures 12 frogs to examine,
what is the probability he finds this trait in more than 4 frogs?

51. Find the mean and standard deviation of a random variable fol-
lowing a binomial distribution corresponding to 50 trials each with
a probability of success equal to 0.2.

52. An exam consisting of 75 true/false questions is taken in the last

five minutes of the exam period by a student who accidentally slept
through most of the exam period. The student, given the small
amount of time available to complete the exam randomly guesses
on all 75 questions. Find the mean and standard deviation for the
number of questions correctly answered by such a student.

53. The lifetimes of bulbs used in a lamp are normally distributed.

A company X sells bulbs with a mean lifetime of 850 hours and
a standard deviation of 50 hour. Find the probability of a bulb,
from company X , having a lifetime of less than 830 hours.

54. For the last 300 years, extensive records have been kept on volcanic
activity in Japan. In 2002, there were five eruptions or instances of
major seismic activity. From historical records, the mean number
of eruptions or instances of major seismic activity is 2.4 per year.
A researcher is interested in modeling the number of eruptions or
major seismic activities over the 5-year period, 2005-2010. What
probability model might be appropriate?

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