Assignment #4

1. According to a survey by the Administrative Management Society, 1/3 of U. S.

companies give employees four weeks of vacation after they have been with company
for 15 years. Find the probability that among 6 companies surveyed at random, the
number of companies that give employees 4 weeks of vacation after 15 years of
employment is:
(a) anywhere from 2 to 5;
(b) fewer than 3.

2. A card is drawn from a well-shuffled deck of 52 playing cards, the result recorded,
and the card replaced. If the experiment is repeated 5 times, what is the probability of
obtaining 2 spades and 1 heart?

3. On the average a certain intersection results in 3 traffic accidents per month. What is
the probability that in any given month at the intersection
(a) exactly 5 accidents will occur?
(b) less than 3 accidents will occur?
(c) at least 2 accidents will occur?

4. An electronics firm claims that the proportion of defective units of a certain process is
5%. A buyer has a standard procedure of inspecting 15 units selected randomly from a
large lot. On a particular occasion, the buyer found 5 items defective.
(a) What is the probability of this occurrence, give that the claim of 5% defective is
correct?
(b) What would be your reaction if you were the buyer?

5. A company generally purchases large lots of a certain types of electronic device. A

method is used that rejects a lot if two or more defective units are found in a random
sample of 100 units.
(a) What is the probability of rejecting a lot that is 1% defective?
(b) What is the probability of accepting a lot that is 5% defective?

6. The finished inside diameter of a piston ring is normally distributed with a mean of
10 centimeters and a standard deviation of 0.03 centimeter.
(a) What proportion of rings will have inside diameters exceeding 10.075
centimeters?
(b) What is the probability that a piston ring will have an inside diameter between
9.97 and 10.03 centimeters?
(c) Below what value of inside diameter will 15% of the piston rings fall?

7. The heights of 1000 students are normally distributed with a mean of 174.5
centimeters and a standard deviation of 6.9 centimeters. Assuming that the heights are
recorded to the nearest half-centimeter, how many of these students would you expect
to have heights
 (a) less than 160.0 centimeters?
(b) between 171.5 and 182.0 centimeters inclusive?
(c) equal to 175.0 centimeters?
(d) greater than or equal to 188.0 centimeters?

8. If a set of observations are normally distributed, what percent of these differ from the
mean by
(a) more than 1.3?
(b) less than 0.52?

9. A drug manufacturer claims that a certain drug cures a blood disease on the average
of 80% of the time. To check the claim, government testers used the drug on a sample
of 100 individuals and decided to accept the claim if 75 or more are cured.
(a) What is the probability that the claim will be rejected when the cure probability is,
in fact 80%?
(b) What is the probability that the claim will be accepted by the government when
the cure probability is as low as 70%.

10. In a chemical processing plant it is important that the yield of a certain type of batch
product stay above 80%. If it stays below 80% for an extended period of time, the
company loses money. Occasional defective manufactured batches are of little
concern. But if several batches per day are defective, the plant shuts down and
adjustments are made. It is known that the yield is normally distributed with standard
deviation 4%.
(a) What is the probability of a false alarm (yield below 80%) when the mean yield
is 85%?
(b) What is the probability that a manufactured batch will have a yield that exceeds
80% when in fact the mean is 79%.