Mid-Semester Exam: Maths-II

Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi

19th February, 2020

Duration: 60 minutes Maximum Marks: 25

Question 1. A random variable X has the following CDF. (The symbol

bxc denotes the greatest integer less than or equal to x.)


0 if x < 1

c if 1 ≤ x < 2

FX (x) = bxc−1
 j
 P 3
c + otherwise


j=1 10

(a) (5 marks) Find the value of the constant c. Also find the PMF of X.

(b) (5 marks) Find the expectation and the variance of X.

Answer 1. This question is cancelled. Basically, what I had in mind was

that c = 2/3 and the remaining part was supposed to be 0.3̄. Sometime
towards the end of the exam one of the students pointed out that the CDF
wasn’t summing up to 1. I realised that I had put the exponent in the wrong
place, and I panicked - announced that the question was wrong, even though
in hindight it’s actually correct. So please ignore this question.

Question 2 (5 marks). Consider a regular octagon centered at the origin

(0, 0) in the plane R2 . Assume that one of the vertices of this octagon lies
on the positive x-axis.
One of the eight vertices of the octagon is chosen at random. Let X be
angle that the line joining the origin and this vertex makes with the positive
x-axis, measured anti-clockwise. (In other words if the chosen vertex has
polar coordinates (r, θ) then the value of X is θ).
 Let B be the event that the chosen vertex is in the first quadrant (this
includes both the positive x-axis as well as the positive y-axis). Find the
conditional PMF PX|B .

Note. A regular polygon is a polygon having equal sides as well as equal

angles. For example, an equilateral triangle (3 sides), a square (4 sides), a
regular pentagon (5 sides), etc. A regular octagon has 8 sides.

Answer 2. There are two approaches to solving this.

First method

Step 1. Express event B as a subset of the sample space. So if the sample

space of the experiment is the set of 8 vertices of the octagon,
  
 π π 7π 7π
S = (R, 0) , R cos , R sin , . . . , R cos , R sin ,
4 4 4 4

where R > 0 is the circumradius of the octagon, then

   
R R
B = (R, 0) , √ , √ , (0, R) .
2 2

Rubric: 1 mark for the sample space, 1 mark for the expression of
B.

In case the student assumes that the octagon is circumscribed on the

unit circle, please do not deduct any marks. Also, in case the answer
is expressed in words instead of symbols, please do not deduct any
marks. What is important is that the answer should be logically
correct.

Step 2.

PX|B (x) = P (X = x|B)

P ({t ∈ S | X(t) = x and t ∈ B})
=
P (B)
P ({t ∈ S | X(t) = x and t ∈ B})
= .
3/8
 Therefore
(
1
3 if x = 0, π4 , π2
PX|B (x) =
0 otherwise .

Rubric: 1 mark for the correct formula for conditional pmf, 1 mark
for substituting the values correctly into the formula and 1 mark for
the final answer.

In case the student does not use the same set theoretic notation
as above, please do not deduct marks. Please look at the logical
consistency of his/her answers, regardless of notation.

Second method:

Step 1. Express event B as a subset of the range SX of the random variable

X. So n π πo
B = 0, , .
4 2
Rubric: 1 mark for this step.

Step 2. Write the formula for the conditional pmf:

( P (x)
X
if x ∈ B
PX|B (x) = PX (B)
0 otherwise .

Rubric: 1 mark for the correct formula. Make sure to deduct

half a mark if the student writes P (B) in the denominator
instead of PX (B). This is a logical mistake. It was explained in
class that the use of the symbol P (B) has been incorrectly used in
the textbook, so the students are responsible for writing this cor-
rectly. However, if the student uses the words “by abuse of notation”
and writes P (B) then don’t deduct half a mark. The student should
be aware of the abuse of notation in this context.

Step 3. Write the formulae for PX (B) and the pmf and evaluate PX (B).
X
PX (B) = PX (x).
x∈B
(
1
8 if x = 0, π4 , . . . , 7π
4
PX (x) =
0 otherwise .
 Therefore X 3
PX (B) = PX (x) = .
8
x∈B

Rubric: 2 marks for this step. If the answer is written directly, do

not deduct marks.

Step 4. Therefore (
1
3 if x = 0, π4 , π2
PX|B (x) =
0 otherwise .

Rubric: 1 mark for this step.

 Question 3.

(a) (5 marks) A pirate on an island is looking for treasure. He has a map

on which the figure below is drawn. There are eight locations where the
treasure is hidden. These are marked on the map using two letters. The
first letter indicates North, South, East or West, and the second letter
indicates Anticlockwise or Clockwise.

The pirate knows that there are 19 gold coins hidden in the North, 16
in the East, 18 in the South and 18 in the West. The probability of
finding treasure is the same in all these four directions.

However, he is twice as likely to find the treasure when he moves Clock-

wise than Anticlockwise.

He is only allowed to choose one of the eight locations in each attempt.

All attempts to find the treasure are independent. He has to go back to
the center/origin after each successful or unsuccessful attempt. What is
the expected number of attempts that he requires to make in order to
find all the treasure?

NA NC

WC EA
o

WA EC

SC SA

(b) (5 marks) If a knight is placed randomly on a chessboard what is the

expected number of moves that it can make?

Answer 3.
(a) The assumption that all the attempts are independent necessitates that
the attempts in each of the 8 directions be regarded as a separate Geo-
metric random variable. Since the probability in all clockwise directions
is the same, the answer can also be expressed as the sum of 2 Pascal
random variables.
Rubric: 2 grace marks are given in case the number of attempts to find
treasure is modelled as a random variable having finite range. In this
case 1.5 marks are for the pmf and 0.5 for the expectation.
In case the student indicates that the random variable can be described
using the Geometric or Pascal distribution, or any other discrete random
variable having infinite range, with enough justification for this answer,
without calculating the pmf or the expectation, s/he is awarded 3 marks.
In case a discrete random variable having infinite range is used to model,
the remaining 2 marks of the question are for calculating the pmf and
the expectation.
The answer: My assumption is that the pirate knows the number of gold
coins located in each of the 8 directions. Without this assumption, the
problem would be incorrect, because if the pirate continues to try and
find treasure in say the East Anticlockwise direction, after having found
the treasure, then the probability of finding treasure in that direction
is zero, which contradicts the independence assumption, because the
conditional probability of finding the treasure must remain the same as
earlier.
So let the probability of finding the treasure in the NA direction be q.
This means that the probability of finding treasure in the NC direction
must be 2q. It also follows that the probability of finding treasure in
EA, WA, SA is q and the probability of finding treasure in the EC, WC
and SC directions is 2q. Let the number of attempts in direction EA be
denoted XEA , and likewise for the rest of the directions. Let the total
number of attempts to find all the treasure be X. Then
X = XEA + XEC + XW A + XW C + XSA + XSC + XN A + XN C .
Then
E(X) = E(XEA ) + E(XEC ) + E(XW A ) + E(XW C )
+ E(XN A ) + E(XN C ) + E(XSA ) + E(XSC )
4 2
= +
q q
6
= .
q
Other solutions with different assumptions were graded on a case by
case basis. In each instance up to half a mark was deducted if the
independence assumption on the trials was not taken into account.
(b) Two approaches to solving this are described, along with rubric. Alter-
native answers were graded on a case by case basis.

First method

Step 1. Let X be the number of moves that the knight can make on any
of the 64 possible squares. The sample space consists of all 64
squares. The range of X is

SX = {2, 3, 4, 6, 8}.

Rubric: 2 marks for finding the range of X correctly.

Step 2. The pmf of X is

1

 16 if x = 2






1
if x = 3




 8




PX (x) = 5
16 if x = 4





 1
if x = 6




 4




1

4 if x = 8

Rubric: 2 marks for finding the pmf of X correctly.

Step 3.
2 3 5 6 8 1
E(X) = + + + + =5 .
16 8 4 4 4 4
Rubric: 1 mark for finding the expectation.

Second method

Step 1. Let X be the number of moves that the knight can make on any
of the 64 possible squares. Then X can be expressed as the sum
of eight random variables

X = X1 + X2 + . . . + X8
 where Xj is the number of possible moves that the knight can
make in direction j. The possible directions are: north-left,
north-right,...,west-left, west-right.
Rubric: 3 marks for expressing this idea.
Step 2. The expectation of each of these 8 random variables is the same
because of symmetry. So it is sufficient to fix one direction, say
north-right and calculate the expectation. This is a Bernoulli
random variable. The probability that there is a possible move
7×6
in the north-right direction is , because this move is not
64
possible in the extreme right column, nor in the top two rows.
Thus the required expectation is
7×6 1
E(X) = ×8=5 .
64 4
Rubric: 2 marks for the above argument.