MATHS 2201 Engineering Mathematics I Tutorial Exercise 2

Week of 12 March 2012

1. Suppose the diameters of pistons produced by a certain manufacturer are normally distributed
with mean 120mm and standard deviation 0.2mm. The diameters of the corresponding cylinders
are normally distributed with mean 120.5mm and standard deviation 0.1mm. Find the probability
that a randomly chosen piston will be too large to t in a randomly chosen cylinder.
2. Let the time to failure of an electronic component, T, be an exponential random variable with rate
. Given that the component has not failed in r minutes, what is the probability that it will not
fail in the next s minutes? Explain why this is called the memoryless property of the exponential
distribution.
3. Suppose X
1
and X
2
are independent random variables with E(X
1
) =
1
, var(X
1
) =
2
1
, E(X
2
) =

2
and var(X
2
) =
2
2
, and let
D = X
2
X
1
.
(a) Find E(D) and var(D).
(b) Show that cov(X
1
, D) =
2
1
.
(c) Find the correlation between X
1
and D.
(d) In a sports engineering experiment, two identical footballs were used, one lled with ordinary
air and the other lled with helium. A footballer then kicked the air lled football followed by
the helium lled football from 39 dierent positions on the eld and the distance of each kick
(in yards) was recorded. Shown below is a scatter plot of the dierence between the second
and rst kicks against the distance of rst kick.
Note that a positive dierence means that the second kick (helium lled) was longer and a
negative dierence means that the rst kick (air lled) was longer.
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G G
G
G
G
G
G
G G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
G
15 20 25 30 35

1
5

5
0
5
1
0
Distances of football kicks
First Kick
D
i
f
f
e
r
e
n
c
e
One explanation for the pattern in the scatter plot is that:
If the rst kick was short, then the footballer would try harder with the second kick.
If the rst kick was long, the footballer would be fatigued and less able to kick as far the
second time.
Explain whether this would be a reasonable conclusion.
1
4. The total cost of repair for an electrical appliance is determined by the price of the parts and the
labour. At a certain company, it is known from previous records that for a randomly chosen repair
job:
The cost of the parts X has mean
X
= $185 and standard deviation
X
= $62;
The amount of labour T has mean
T
= 1.25 hours and standard deviation
T
= 0.3 hours.
The correlation coecient is
XT
= 0.31.
The cost of labour is $85 per hour.
(a) Give an expression for the total cost of the repair, R, in terms of X and T.
(b) Find
R
and
R
.
5. An MP3 player uses a single AAA battery and the lifetime X for a certain brand of alkaline battery
has E(X) = 9.5 hours and var(X) = 0.75
2
. Find the probability that a packet of 25 batteries will
be sucient to power the player for at least 240 hours in total. State any assumptions you have
made in calculating your answer.
6. Suppose the actual weights in kg for bags of fertiliser produced by a certain manufacturer have
the uniform distribution U(39.5, 41.0). Suppose also that pallet is to be loaded with 25 randomly
chosen bags of fertiliser let W be the total weight of the bags of fertiliser (excluding the weight of
the pallet).
(a) If X has the uniform distribution, X U(39.5, 41.0) nd = E(X) and
2
= var(X).
(b) Find
W
and
W
.
(c) Find an approximate value for the probability that the total weight is between 1005 and
1010kg. Clearly state any assumptions you have made in your caculations.
7. The lifetime of a certain spacecraft component is normally distributed with mean = 3000 hours
and standard deviation = 800 hours. A failed component can be replaced immediately by a new
one during a mission. What is the probability that one spare will suce for a mission of 3000 hours
is the component lifetimes are assumed independent.

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