UNIVERSITY OF ESWATINI
Department of Statistics & Demography
Tutorial Sheet 1
Question 1
Two events A and B are such that P (A) = 0.2, P (B) = 0.3 and P (A ∪ B) = 0.4. Find the following P (A ∩ B),
P (Ac ∪ B c ), P (Ac ∩ B c ), and P (Ac |B).
Question 2
a. If A and B are independent events with P (A) = 0.5 and P (B) = 0.2, find the following P (A ∩ B), P (Ac ∪ B c )
and P (Ac ∩ B c ).
b. During an epidemic in a town, 40% of its inhabitants became sick. Of any 100 sick persons, 10 will need to
be admitted to an emergency ward. What is the probability that a randomly chosen person from this town
will be admitted to an emergency ward?
c. Suppose a statistics class contains 70% male and 30% female students. It is known that in a test, 5% of
males and 10% of females got an ”A” grade. If one student from this class is randomly selected and observed
to have an ”A” grade, what is the probability that this is a male student?
d. Suppose that three types of antimissile defense systems are being tested. From the design point of view,
each of these systems has an equally likely chance of detecting and destroying an incoming missile within a
range of 250 miles with a speed ranging up to nine times the speed of sound. However, in actual practice it
has been observed that the precisions of these antimissile systems are not the same; that is, the first system
will usually detect and destroy the target 10 of 12 times, the second will detect and destroy it 9 of 12 times,
and the third will detect and destroy it 8 of 12 times. We have observed that a target has been detected and
destroyed. What is the probability that the antimissile defense system was of the third type?
e. Police plan to enforce speed limits by using radar traps at four different locations within the city limits. The
radar traps at each of the locations L1 , L2 , L3 , and L4 will be operated 40%, 30%, 20%, and 30% of the
time. If a person who is speeding on her way to work has probabilities of 0.2, 0.1, 0.5, and 0.2, respectively,
of passing through these locations, what is the probability that she will receive a speeding ticket?
f. If the person in (d) received a speeding ticket on her way to work, what is the probability that she passed
through the radar trap located at L2 ?
Question 3
a. In a high school graduating class of 100 students, 54 studied mathematics, 69 studied history, and 35 studied
both mathematics and history. If one of these students is selected at random, find the probability that
i. the student took mathematics or history;
ii. the student did not take either of these subjects;
iii. the student took history but not mathematics.
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Question 4
b. Let Y be a random variable with p(y) given in the table below. Find E(Y ), E(1/Y ), E(Y 2 − 1) and V (Y ).
y 1 2 3 4
p(y) 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1
c. Let Y denote a random variable that has a Poisson distribution with λ = 2. Find
i P (Y = 4).
ii P (Y ≥ 4).
iii P (Y < 4).
iv P (Y ≥ 4|Y ≥ 2).
