1. A 8 week old baby smiling time is random between 0-23 sec.

a) What is the probability that a random choosen 8 week old baby smiles between 5 &
18 sec?
b) Find the 90th percentile for a 8 week old baby smiling time?
c) Find the probability that a baby smiles more than 12 sec given that baby has smiled
for more than 8 weeks?
2. The mean I.Q.(intelligence quotient) of a large number of children of age 14 was 100 and the
standard deviation 16. Assuming that the distribution was normal,find:
a) What % of the children had I.Q. under 80?
b) Between what limits the I.Q.’s of the middle 40% of the children lay?
c) What % of the children had I.Q.’s within the range μ ± 1.96 σ ?
3. The standard deviation of a certain group of 1,000 high school grades was 11% and the
mean grade 78%. Assuming the distribution to be normal, find :
a) How many grades were above 90%?
b) What was the highest grade of the lowest 10?
c) Within what limits did the middle 90% lie?
4. The local authorities in a certain city install 10,000 electric lamps in the streets of the city. If
these lamps have an average life of 1,000 burning hours with a standard deviation of 200
hours, assuming normality, what number of lamps might be expected to fail
a) in the first 800 burning hours?
b) between 800 and 1,200 burning hours?
c) After what period of burning hours would you expect that (a) 10% of the lamps
would fail? (b) 10% of the lamps would be still burning?
5. Suppose that during rainy season on a tropical island the length of the shower has an
exponential distribution, with parameter λ = 2, time being measured in minutes.
a) What is the probability that a shower will last more than three minutes?
b) If a shower has already lasted for 2 minutes, what is the probability that it will last
for at least one more minute?
6. Silver band resistor are correct to ±10 %. If the probability that such a resistor, of nominal
value 100 ohms in the acceptable range of 100±2 ohms is 0.6. What is the probability that of
the three purchased :
a) The first two are within the range;
b) The first two are within the range and the third outside the range;
c) Any two are within the range irrespective of the other one;
d) Any two are within the range and the other outside it?
7. It is known that the probability of an item produced by a certain machine will be defective is
0.05. if the produced item are sent to the market in packets of 20. Find the number of
packets containing at least , exactly and at the most 2 defective items in a consignment of
1000 packets using
a) binomial distribution
b) Poisson approximation to binomial distribution
8. A department in a laundry has 10 machines which may need adjustments from time to time
during the day. Three of these machines are old, each having a probability of 1/11 of
needing adjustment during the day, and 7 are new having corresponding probabilities of
1/21. Assuming that no machine needs adjustment twice on the same day , determine the
probabilities that on a particular day
a) Just 2 old and no new machine need adjustment.
b) If just 2 machines need adjustment, they are of the same type.
9. A 5l Litre bucket of water is taken from a swamp. The water contains 75 mosquito larvae. A
200mL flask of water is taken form the bucket for further analysis.
 a) What is the expected number of larvae in the flask?
b) What is the probability that the flask contains at least one mosquito larvae?
10. 20 men aged 45 who are members of the same occupational grouping, apply for a 15 year
term life insurance policy. in order to know how much to charge for the policy, the issuing
company needs to be able to estimate how many of the applicant will die before age 60, in
which case the company will have to pay off on the policy. Actuarial studies indicate that of
all 45 year old men in the applicants occupational grouping 5% will die before they reach age
of 60.
a) Find the parameter of the random variable which denotes the number of applicants who
die before they reach the age of 60.
b) What is the probability that none of the applicants will die before age 60,
making it a very profitable deal for the insurance company?
c) Find the probability that not more than 2 of the 20 will die during 15 years term.
d) What are the chances that more than 5 of the 20 applicant will die before age of
60?
11. A young man who is waiting for a young lady decides to walk under the following set
of rules. He tosses a fair coin. If the coin falls heads, he walks 10 step north; if the
coins falls tails, he walks 10 steps south. What is the probability that after walking 100
steps he is
a) Back to the starting point
b) 20 steps from starting point
c) 40 steps from starting point
12. Customers enter a large store randomly at an average rate of 240 per hour. What is
the probability that during
a) One minute interval no one will enter?
b) A two minute interval no one will enter?
13. It is known that the probability of an item produced by a certain machine will be
defective is 0.05. if the produced item are sent to the market in packets of 20. Find
the number of packets containing at least, exactly and at the most 2 defective
items in a consignment of 1000 packets using
a) Binomial distribution
b) Poisson approximation to binomial distribution

14. A boy and girl agree to meet at a certain park between 4 and 5 P.M. They agree
that one arriving first will wait t hours where .0≤x≤1, for other to arrive. Assuming
that arrivals are independent and uniformly distributed.
a) What is the probability that either waits for more than 5 minutes for the bus?
b) What is the probability that the either waits for not more than 13 minutes?
c) What is the probability that he doesn’t wait?
15. The mean yield for one-acre plot is 662 kilos with a S.D. 32 kilos. Assuming normal
distribution, how many one-acre plots in a batch of 1,000 plots would you expect
to have yield:
a) Over 700 kilos
b) Below 650 kilos
c) What is the lowest yield of the best 100 plots?
16. There are six hundred Economics students in the post-graduate classes of a
university, and the probability for any student to need a copy of a particular book
from the university library on any day is 0.05. how many copies of the book should
be kept in the university library so that the probability may be greater than 0.90
that none of the students needing a copy from the library has to come back
disappointed? (Use normal approximation to the Binomial Distribution).
17. Suppose that during rainy season on a tropical island the length of the shower has
an exponential distribution, with parameter λ = 3, time being measured in
minutes.
a) What is the probability that a shower will last more than two minutes?
b) If a shower has already lasted for 2 minutes, what is the probability that it will
last for at least one more minute?
18. If X has exponential distribution with mean 2, find P(X<1 | X<2).
19. Most graduate schools of business require applicants for admission to take the
Graduate Management Admission Council’s GMAT examination. Scores on the
GMAT are roughly normally distributed with a mean of 527 and a standard
deviation of 112. What is the probability of an individual scoring above 500 on the
GMAT?
20. The length of human pregnancies from conception to birth approximates a normal
distribution with a mean of 266 days and a standard deviation of 16 days. What
proportion of all pregnancies will last between 240 and 270 days (roughly
between 8 and 9 months)?
21. The average number of acres burned by forest and range fires in a large New
Mexico country is 4,300 acres per year, with a standard deviation of 750 acres.
The distribution of the number of acres burned is normal. What is the probability
that between 2,500 and 4,200 acres will be burned in any given year?
22. A worn machine is known to produce 10% defective components. If the random
variable X is the number of defective components produced in a run of 3
components, find the probabilities that X takes the values 0 to 3. Suppose now
that a similar machine which is known to produce 1% defective components is
used for a production run of 40 components. We wish to calculate the probability
that two defective items are produced. Essentially we are assuming that X _ B(40,
0.01) and are asking for P(X = 2). We use both the binomial distribution and its
Poisson approximation for comparison.
23. In the manufacture of glassware, bubbles can occur in the glass which reduces the
status of the glassware to that of a ‘second’. If, on average, one in every 1000
items produced has a bubble, calculate the probability that exactly six items in a
batch of three thousand are seconds.
24. A manufacturer produces light-bulbs that are packed into boxes of 100. If quality
control studies indicate that 0.5% of the light-bulbs produced are defective, what
percentage of the boxes will contain:
a) no defective? (b) 2 or more defectives?
25. A Council is considering whether to base a recovery vehicle on a stretch of road to
help clear incidents as quickly as possible. The road concerned carries over 5000
vehicles during the peak rush hour period. Records show that, on average, the
number of incidents during the morning rush hour is 5. The Council won’t base a
vehicle on the road if the probability of having more than 5 incidents in any one
morning is less than 30%. Based on this information should the Council provide a
vehicle?
26. The mean number of bacteria per millilitre of a liquid is known to be 6. Find the
probability that in 1 ml of the liquid, there will be: (a) 0, (b) 1, (c) 2, (d) 3, (e) less
than 4, (f) 6 bacteria.
27. Large sheets of metal have faults in random positions but on average have 1 fault per 10 m2.
What is the probability that a sheet 5 m × 8 m will have at most one fault?
28. If 250 litres of water are known to be polluted with 106 bacteria what is the probability that
a sample of 1 cc of the water contains no bacteria?
29. Suppose vehicles arrive at a signalised road intersection at an average rate of 360 per hour
and the cycle of the traffic lights is set at 40 seconds. In what percentage of cycles will the
number of vehicles arriving be (a) exactly 5, (b) less than 5? If, after the lights change to
green, there is time to clear only 5 vehicles before the signal changes to red again, what is
the probability that waiting vehicles are not cleared in one cycle?
30. A manufacturer sells a certain article in batches of 5000. By agreement with a customer the
following method of inspection is adopted: A sample of 100 items is drawn at random from
each batch and inspected. If the sample contains 4 or fewer defective items, then the batch
is accepted by the customer. If more than 4 defectives are found, every item in the batch is
inspected. If inspection costs are 75 p per hundred articles, and the manufacturer normally
produces 2% of defective articles, find the average inspection costs per batch.
31. A book containing 150 pages has 100 misprints. Find the probability that a particular page
contains (a) no misprints, (b) 5 misprints, (c) at least 2 misprints, (d) more than 1 misprint.
32. For a particular machine, the probability that it will break down within a week is 0.009. The
manufacturer has installed 800 machines over a wide area. Calculate the probability that (a)
5, (b) 9, (c) less than 5, (d) more than 4 machines breakdown in a week.
33. At a given university, the probability that a member of staff is absent on any one day is
0.001. If there are 800 members of staff, calculate the probabilities that the number absent
on any one day is (a) 6, (b) 4, (c) 2, (d) 0, (e) less than 3, (f) more than 1.
34. The number of failures occurring in a machine of a certain type in a year has a Poisson
distribution with mean 0.4. In a factory there are ten of these machines. What is (a) the
expected total number of failures in the factory in a year?
(b) the probability that there are fewer than two failures in the factory in a year?
35. Previous results indicate that 1 in 1000 transistors are defective on average.
(a) Find the probability that there are 4 defective transistors in a batch of 2000.
(b) What is the largest number, N, of transistors that can be put in a box so that the
probability of no defectives is at least 1/2?