1
PROBABILITY III : PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTION
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
LEARN BY SOLVING
1. Find mean (), variance (2) and standard deviation ()for each of the following probability
distributions:
(i)
X 0 1 3 5
P(X) 0.2 0.5 0.2 0.1
(ii)
Y -2 -1 0 1 2
P(Y) 0.1 0.2 0.4 0.2 0.1
2. A die is tossed twice. A 'success' is getting an odd number on a toss. Find the variance of the number of
successes.
3. If X is the number of heads in three tosses of a coin, what are the mean, variance and standard deviation
of X?
4. Two bad eggs are accidentally, mixed with ten goods ones. Three eggs are drawn at random without
replacement from this lot. Compute for the number of bad eggs drawn.
5. In a game, a person is paid Rs. 5 if he gets all heads or all tails when three coins are tossed, and he will
pay Rs. 3 if either one or two heads show. What can he expect to win on the average per game?
6. A die is tossed thrice. A 'success' is getting 1 or 5 on a toss. Find the mean and the variance of the
number of successes.
7. Two unbiased dice are thrown together at random. What is the expected value of the total number of
points shown up?
8. A fair coin is tossed until a head occurs or four tails occur in succession. If X denotes the number of
tosses of the coin, find the probability distribution of X. Hence compute the mean and variance of X.
9. A random variable X has the following probability distribution:
xi -2 -1 0 1 2 3 (i) Find the value of k (ii) Calculate the mean
of X. (iii) Calculate the variance of X.
Pi 0.1 k 0.2 2k 0.3 k
10. A die is thrown 6 times. Getting an odd number is a success. What is the probability of (i) 5 successes
(ii) at least 5 successes (iii) at most 5 successes.
11. An unbiased die is thrown 3 times. If getting a '2' or '5' is considered a success, find the probability of at
least 2 successes.
12. The probability that a bulb produced by a factory will fuse after six months of use is 0.05. Find the
probability that out of 5 such bulbs (i) none (ii) not more than one (iii) at least one will fuse after 6
months of use.
13. A pair of dice is thrown 1 times. If getting a total of 1 is consider success, what is the probability of
getting (i) no success (ii) exactly 6 successes (iii) at least 6 successes (iv) at most 6 successes.
14. A bag contains 10 balls each marked with one of the digits 0 to 9. If4 balls are drawn successively with
replacement from the bag, what is the probability that none is marked with digit 0?
15. A bag contains 5 white, 1 red and 8 black balls. If4 balls are drawn at random one by one with
replacement, what is the probability that (i) none is white, (ii) all are white and (iii) only 2 are white.
16. A box contains 100 tickets each bearing one of the numbers from 1 to 100. If 5 tickets are drawn
successively with replacement from the box, find the probability, that all the tickets bear numbers
divisible by 10.
9
17. Suppose 10% of the items produced by a factory are defective. If 4 items are chosen at random, find the
probability that (i) 2 are defective, (ii) none is defective
18. Suppose that 90% of people are right-handed. What is the probability that at most 6 of a random sample
of 10 people are right-handed?
19. An urn contains 25 balls of which 10 balls bear a mark 'X' and the remaining 15 bear a mark 'Y'. A ball
is drawn at random from the run, its mark noted down and it is replaced. If 6 balls are drawn in this
way, find the probability that (i) all will bear 'X' mark (ii) not more than 2 will bear 'Y' mark
(iii) the number of balls with 'X' mark and 'Y' mark will be equal. (iv) at least one ball will bear 'Y' mark
(v) Find also the mean number of balls with 'X' mark.
20. In a hurdle race, a player has to cross 10 hurldes. The probability that he will clear each hurdle is 5/6.
What is the probability that he will knock down fewer than 2 hurdles?
21. A die is thrown again and again until three sixes are obtained. Find the probability of obtaining the third
six in the sixth throw of the die.
22. The probability that a patient recovers from a serious disease is 0.9. Find the probability that exactly 5
of next 1 patients who have this disease will recover.
23. An experiment succeeds twice as often as it fails. Find the probability that in the next six trials, there
will be at least 4 successes.
24. A man takes a step forward with probability 0.4 and backwards with probability 0.6. Find the
probability that at the end of eleven steps, he is just one step away from the starting point.
25. Six dice are thrown 729 times. How many times do you expect at least three dice to show a five or six?
26. The probability of a man hitting a target is 1/4. How many times must he fire so that the probability of
his hitting the target at least once is greater than 2/3?
27. Find the probability distribution of the number of doublets in 4 throws of a pair of dice.
28. Calculate P(r) for r = 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, taking n = 5 and p = 1/6 with the help of recurrence formula of the
binomial distribution.
29. A die is thrown 5 times. Getting a number 5 on the die is considered a success. Calculate P(r) for r = 1,
2, 3, 4 from recurrence formula.
30. If the mean and the variance of a binomial distribution are respectively 9 and 6, find the distribution.
31. A die is rolled 20 times. Getting a number greater than 4 is a success. Find the mean and variance of the
number of successes.
32. The probability that Hari hits a target is 1/4. He fires 64 times. Find the expected number () of times he
will hit the target and also the variance (2).
33. If the sum of the mean and variance of a binomial distribution for 5 trials is 1.8. Find the distribution.
34. Find the expected number E(X) of correct answers obtained by guessing in a true-false test consisting of
50 questions.
35. If the mean and variance of a binomial distribution are respectively 9 and 6, find the distribution.
36. The mean and variance of a binomial distribution are 4 and 4/3 respectively, find P(X 1).
37. If X follows binomial distribution with mean 4 and variance 2, find 𝑃(|𝑋 − 4| ≤ 2).