3.
50
A particular telephone number is used to receive both voice calls and fax messages. Suppose that 25% of
the incoming calls involve fax messages, and consider a sample of 25 incoming calls. What is the
probability that
a. At most 6 of the calls involve a fax message?
b. Exactly 6 of the calls involve a fax message?
c. At least 6 of the calls involve a fax message?
d. More than 6 of the calls involve a fax message?
3.70
An instructor who taught two sections of engineering statistics last term, the first with 20 students and
the second with 30, decided to assign a term project. After all projects had been turned in, the instructor
randomly ordered them before grading. Consider the first 15 graded projects.
a. What is the probability that exactly 10 of these are from the second section?
d. What are the mean value and standard deviation of the number among these 15 that are from the
second section?
3.87
3.88
In proof testing of circuit boards, the probability that any particular diode will fail is .01. Suppose a
circuit board contains 200 diodes.
a. How many diodes would you expect to fail, and what is the standard deviation of the number that are
expected to fail?
b. What is the (approximate) probability that at least four diodes will fail on a randomly selected board?
c. If five boards are shipped to a particular customer, how likely is it that at least four of them will work
properly? (A board works properly only if all its diodes work.)
4.4
Let X denote the vibratory stress (psi) on a wind turbine blade at a particular wind speed in a wind
tunnel.
a. Verify that f(x; ) is a legitimate pdf.
b. Suppose = 100. What is the probability that X is at most 200? Less than 200? At least 200?
c. What is the probability that X is between 100 and 200 (again assuming = 100)?
4.32
Suppose the force acting on a column that helps to support a building is a normally distributed random
variable X with mean value 15.0 kips and standard deviation 1.25 kips. Compute the following
probabilities by standardizing and then using Table A.3.
a. P(X ≤ 15)
b. P(X ≤ 17,5)
c. P(X ≥ 10)
d. P(14 ≤ X ≤ 18)
e. P(|X – 15|≤ 3)
4.35
Suppose the diameter at breast height (in.) of trees of a certain type is normally distributed with µ=8.8 and
=2.8, as suggested in an article.
d. What value c is such that the interval (8.8 – c, 8.8 + c) includes 98% of all diameter values?
e. If four trees are independently selected, what is the probability that at least one has a diameter
exceeding 10 in.?
4.61
