Some practice word problems for midterm 2, STAT285 Fall 2016

1. Each time when the deer walks across the road it has a probability 0.1 to be hit by a
car. What is the probability that the 10th time crossing the road it was hit by a car?
2. A company produces slip-ring bearings for machinery or motors. Employees have
taken 50 samples of the bearings and measured the diameter of the bearings. The
distribution is listed below.
Sample size
50

Mean
5.01

Standard Deviation
0.08

a. Construct a 95% confidence interval of the mean diameter of the bearings

b. If the next day employees would collect a sample of 50 bearings again, what is the
probability that the sample mean is bigger than 5.1?
3. The time in between fire accidents follows an exponential distribution with =4 days.
What is the probability that more than 3 days pass without a fire accident?
4. The company has a large meat locker in which a constant temperature of
approximately 40F should be maintained. The manager takes sample temperature
readings randomly one time per day for 20 days. The mean temperature is 37.2 and
the standard deviation is 2. Construct the 90% confidence interval of the mean
temperate.
5. An unbalanced coin has probability 0.7 to turn to head when being tossed. If the
person is playing an experiment by tossing it up 15 times. What is the probability that
there are at most 10 heads? What is the probability that there are at least 10 heads?
6. The university is trying to estimate the percentage of students who failed more than
two courses. In a random sample of 100 students, 12 have failed more than two
courses before. Construct a 99% confidence interval of the actual proportion of
students in the university who failed more than two courses.
7. A random sample of 38 persons who shopped on black Friday was collected to
estimate the average number of hours spent shopping on black Friday. If the mean
hour is 6.08 and the standard deviation is 2.755. How many shoppers should be
included in a sample to estimate the average hour if you want the estimate to deviate
no more than 0.5 hour from the true mean?
8. Suppose there are 5 black, 10 white marbles in an urn. You reach in and randomly
select six marbles without replacement. What is the probability that you pick exactly
three of each color?

9. A trip insurance company pays $3000 to the customer to a car accident in the trip. If
the risk of the accident is 1/200, what would be a fair premium (i.e. the expected cost
per customer to cover)?
10. The average number of calls to a fire station on a weekday is expected to have a
Poisson distribution with lamba=5
a. On a given weekday, what is the probability that there is more than 4 calls to the
fire station?
b. Over the month of April, the average number of calls per day will be recorded.
What is the probability that this average number is more than 4?
Solutions
1. Geometric distribution: p=0.9^9*0.1=0.0387
2.
a. 5.01 +/- 1.96*0.08/sqrt(50) = (4.988, 5.032)
b. Sample mean distribution: normal with mean 5.01, and SD 0.08/sqrt(50)=0.0113
P(xbar>5.1)=P(Z>((5.1-5.01)/0.0113))=P(Z>7.955)=0
3. P(x>3)=exp(-3/)=exp(-0.75)=0.4724
4. Cutoff: with alpha/2=0.05, df=19, t=1.729
37.2 +/- 1.729*2/sqrt(20) = (36.427, 37.973)
5. Using binomial cumulative table
P(x<=10)=0.4845
P(x>=10)=1-P(x<=9)=1-0.2784=0.7216
6.

~
p =(12+2)/(100+4)=14/104=0.1346
~
p (1 ~
p)
~
p z / 2
n4
= 0.1346 +/- 2.575*sqrt(0.1346*0.8654/104 = (0.0484, 0.2208)

7. No confidence level mentioned, we assume 95% confidence level.

n=(1.96*2.755/0.5)^2=116.63, round up to 117.
8. P=C(5,3)*C(10,3)/C(15,6)=0.2398
9. E(x)=0*199/200+3000*1/200=15
10. A. P(x>4)=1-P(x<=4)=1-0.4405=0.5595
B. The average number of calls will have approximately normal distribution, with mean
5, variance 5/30

P(xbar>4)=p(Z>(4-5)/sqrt(5/30))=P(Z>-2.44)=0.99266