AB1202 - Statistics and Analysis Nanyang Business School
AB1202 – STATISTICS AND ANALYSIS
Tutorial :2
Topics : Counting Methods
1. Three different classes contain 18, 25 and 20 students, respectively, and no student is a
member of more than one class. If a team is to be composed of one student from each
of these three classes, in how many different ways can the members of the team be
chosen?
2. Suppose that a club consists of 30 members and that a president and a secretary are to
be chosen form the membership. These two positions cannot be taken by one member.
How many possible ways that these two positions can be filled?
3. Three dice are rolled. What is the probability the same number appears on exactly two
of the three dice?
4. If six dice are rolled, what is the probability that each of six different numbers will
appear exactly once?
5. A committee composed of eight people is to be selected from a group of 20 people.
How many of different groups of people that might be on the committee?
6. Suppose that a fair coin is to be tossed 10 times, and it is desired to determine
(1) The probability of obtaining exactly three Tails.
(2) The probability of obtaining three or fewer Tails
7. Suppose that 100 mathematics students are divided into five classes, each containing
20 students, and that awards are to be given to 10 of these students (the 10 awards are
indistinguishable). If each student is equally likely to receive an award, what is the
probability that exactly two students in each class will receive awards?
8. This question illustrates that it is possible to get the answer to certain probability
problems thru different counting methods.
In a lottery game, six numbers from 1 to 30 are drawn at random from a bin without
replacement (meaning we won’t get the same number more than once), and each
player buys a ticket with six different numbers from 1 to 30. If all six numbers drawn
match those on the player’s ticket, the player wins regardless what sequence the six
numbers are drawn. Consider the following three events:
A= {the draw contains the numbers 1,14,15,20,23 and 27}
B= {one of the numbers drawn is 15} and
C= {the first number drawn is less than 10}
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AB1202 - Statistics and Analysis Nanyang Business School
(1) One way to construct a sample space for the experiment of drawing the winning
combination is to consider all possible sequences of the 6 numbers. That is, each
outcome in the sample space is an ordered sequence of six numbers chosen from
the 30 available numbers. How many these outcomes in the sample space? Use this
method to calculate the probability of events A, B and C.
(2) Another way to construct the sample space is to consider the different combinations
of six numbers drawn from the 30 numbers. This is admissible because a person wins
as long as her ticket has the right six numbers. How many outcomes are there in this
sample space? Use this sample space to calculate the probability of event A and B.
Conditional probabilities & independence
9. Suppose that S is an event that a randomly selected NTU student is a Singaporean.
Evaluate the following questions (based on our common sense and your understanding
of independent events)
(a) If C stands for the event that the student is a Chinese, are S and C independent?
(b) If N stands for the event that the student is an NBS student, are S and N
independent?
(c) If A stands for the event that the student is an American, are A and S independent?
10. A stockbroker knows that the probability that a client owns stocks is 0.7 and the
probability that a client owns bonds is 0.4. The probability that the client owns bonds if
he/she already owns stock is 0.35.
(1) What is the probability that the client owns both of these securities?
(2) Given that the client own bonds, what is the probability that the client owns stocks?
11. The Monty Hall problem is named after a simple game played at a popular TV show in
the ‘90’s, Let's Make a Deal television, where Monty Hall was the host. A guest in the
show will be invited to select one of the three closed doors, where a luxurious prize is
hidden behind of them. If the guest selects the door where the prize is located, she can
take the prize home. But if she selects one of the other two doors, she gets nothing (or
a goat, real one).
To trick the guest, Monty will open one of the remaining doors that have no prize, after
the guest makes the selection. For sure, Monty knows which door has the prize and will
not open that door. After revealing a “goat” door, he will then ask you whether you
would like to switch your choice to the other unopened door, or stay where you are.
For example, let’s say you select Door A. Now, if the grand prize is behind Door B,
Monty will open Door C (see the illustration below) and then you can decide whether to
switch to Door B or not. But if the prize is behind Door A, he will open either Door B or
Door C with 50-50 probability.
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AB1202 - Statistics and Analysis Nanyang Business School
Here is the problem. To maximize the probability of winning, should you switch or not?
Or does switching not change the probability of winning? HINT: compare the
probabilities Pr(Win a prize|Stay with A) and Pr(Win a goat|Stay with A)
A B C
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