MAT 407

Exam 2 Information

Exam date: Thursday, November 17th

 

This will be a closed notes, mostly closed book exam. 

 

You will be allowed (encouraged, even) to use the tables in Appendix B of your book.  The tables that are probably of most interest are the tables of common discrete (p. 596) and continuous (p. 597) distributions.  You may also need to use the tables for binomial and Poisson probabilities.  Since there are more tables in the appendix that you don’t need than ones that you do, please mark the pages in advance with paper clips or something so that you don’t waste time shuffling pages.

 

You will not be permitted to look through the rest of the book during the exam.

 

It is expected that you will have a calculator, either a TI-83/84 or other type.  I’ll bring a few spare TI-83’s for those who want to borrow them.

 

Sections/topics covered on the exam:           

2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6

3.3, 3.4

 

Discrete distributions

Continuous distributions (so far)

General

General

Binomial

Uniform

Geometric

Exponential

Negative binomial

 

Hypergeometric

 

Poisson

 

Discrete uniform

 

 

 

Note that I will assume that you have knowledge of material from previous sections that were covered on the first exam in order to do some of these problems.

 

Office hours:   Tuesday, November 15th         12:15 – 3:00

 

Additional practice problems:

 

1)      On a multiple choice quiz, there are 4 choices for the answer to each question.  Suppose there are 10 questions on the quiz.  A student hasn’t studied at all, and will answer each question purely by picking answers at random.  Let X = # of questions answered correctly.

a.         What is the distribution of X?

b.         What is the expected value of the number of correct answers?

c.         What is the probability the student gets none correct?

d.         What is the probability that the student passes the quiz, that is, gets at least 6 of the 10 questions right?

 

 

2)      Suppose X is uniform on [1,5]. 

a.       Sketch the p.d.f. of X.

b.      Find the c.d.f. of X, F(x).

c.       What are the mean and variance of X?

d.      Find P(X >3), P(X < 0) and P (1< X < 3)

e.       Derive the moment generating function of X.

 

3)      Suppose calls to a 911 switchboard in a small town occur on average 4 times in a week.

a.       What would be an appropriate model (i.e. distribution) for X = number of calls to the switchboard per week?  Justify your answer.

b.      Using the model you identified in part a., compute the probability that no calls come into the switchboard in a week.

c.       Find the probability that at most 5 calls come in during a single week.

d.      Find the probability that more than 6 calls come in during a single week.

 

4)      Let W = the waiting time until the first 911 call in the last problem.

a.       What is the distribution of W?

b.      What is the probability that the first 911 call of a certain week doesn’t come in for at least 3 days?  Note that 3 days = 3/7 of a week.

c.       What is the expected value of W?  What is its variance?

d.      Find the moment generating function of W.

 

5)      A coin is weighted so that P(H)=0.6.  Let Y = number of flips to get a head.  What is the probability that, if we’ve already flipped the coin 7 times without success, that we will have to flip the coin more than 10 times to see the first head?  In other words, find P (Y > 10 | Y > 7).