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hw03

The document outlines Homework #3 for ECE 3077, due on January 30, 2025, consisting of various mathematical and probability problems. Topics include lottery probabilities, arrangements of students based on clothing color, course selection with prerequisites, and error-correcting codes in digital communication. Students are required to apply their understanding of probability and combinatorial principles to solve these problems and provide insightful summaries of class discussions.

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UndyingNationalism
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3 views

hw03

The document outlines Homework #3 for ECE 3077, due on January 30, 2025, consisting of various mathematical and probability problems. Topics include lottery probabilities, arrangements of students based on clothing color, course selection with prerequisites, and error-correcting codes in digital communication. Students are required to apply their understanding of probability and combinatorial principles to solve these problems and provide insightful summaries of class discussions.

Uploaded by

UndyingNationalism
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ECE 3077, Spring 2025

Homework #3
Due Thursday January 30, beginning of lecture. Submit on Gradescope.

1. Using your class notes, prepare a 1-2 paragraph summary of what we talked about
in class in the last week. I do not want just a bulleted list of topics, I want you to
use complete sentences and establish context (Why is what we have learned relevant?
How does it connect with other things you have learned here or in other classes?).
The more insight you give, the better.

2. The MegaMillions Lottery1 , for which you can buy a ticket for $1 at any convenience
store in Colorado (or in 43 other states), works as follows: five numbers between 1
and 75 are drawn without replacement (these are the “white balls” taken from the
same pool), and then an additional number between 1 and 15 is drawn independently
(the “Mega Ball” taken from its own pool). To win the jackpot, you must choose the
first 5 numbers (in any order) and the last number correctly.

(a) Suppose you purchase a ticket using the QuickPick option, which chooses a valid
configuration of numbers uniformly at random from among all the possibilities.
What is the probability p that you hold a winning ticket? (Keep your answer in
fractional, not decimal, form.)
(b) Suppose that n people buy tickets using QuickPick. What is the probability that
k of them chose the winning number?

3. A six-sided die is rolled three times independently. Which is more likely: a sum of 11
or a sum of 12?2 Justify your answer by computing the probability of each event.

4. Buzz is taking selfies with 25 students at Tech Green. He poses with 9 students
wearing gold jackets, 8 wearing white hoodies, and 8 wearing navy blue shirts.

(a) How many unique ways can the 26 be arranged in the photo line?
(b) Suppose the students must now stand in groups according to their clothing color
(all gold jackets together, all white hoodies together, all navy shirts together),
but Buzz can stand anywhere in the line. How many unique ways can they be
arranged?

5. In a moment of weakness, the administration has allowed GT students to define their


own degrees by picking any combination of courses that satisfy certain requirements.
Let’s say ECE offers 8 lower level courses: {L1 , L2 , . . . , L8 } and 10 higher level courses:
{H1 , H2 , . . . , H10 }. To graduate, you must take 7 courses, with 4 chosen from the lower
level and 3 from the upper level.
1
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Millions, which also gives the answer for part (a) if
you get stuck.
2
This question was one of many posed by the French nobleman (and gambler) the Chevalier de Méré
in the 17th century to the famous mathematician Blaise Pascal. In collaboration with Pierre de Fermat,
Pascal laid out the mathematical foundations for the theory of probability in an effort to understand this
exact question. Just imagine how much of de Méré’s money you could take if you could go back and gamble
with him knowing what you know now!

1
(a) In the plan above, how many different possible ways can someone create a cur-
ricula?
(b) After a few years of trying this, the ECE faculty get frustrated because students
come into the upper level classes without the proper prior knowledge to teach the
material (let’s be charitable here and assume for the sake of argument that the
ECE faculty know what they’re talking about to some degree). They decide that
L1 is a prerequisite for courses {H1 , . . . , H5 } and {L2 , L3 } are both prerequisites
for {H6 , . . . , H10 } (i.e., you must take both {L2 , L3 }, not one or the other). How
many different possible ways can someone create a curricula now?

6. A transmitter sends bits to a receiver across a noisy channel. The model for the noise
is simple: regardless of whether a one or a zero was transmitted, the channel flips the
bit with probability p = 0.05. Furthermore, assume that the noise acts on each of the
transmitted bits independently.
In an attempt to combat the noise, the transmitter adopts an n-fold repetition strategy
— it transmits each message bit n times. For example, with n = 5, the transmitter
sends 00000 to convey a message bit of 0, and it sends 11111 to convey a message bit
of 1. This is one of the simplest possible examples of an error-correcting code, which
is one of the fundamental components of a digital communication system.

(a) Suppose n = 5 and the receiver observes 00010. Compare the probability that the
message bit was 1 to the probability that it was 0. In other words, you should
compare P (msg = 1|00010 observed) to P (msg = 0|00010 observed). Assume
that 0 and 1 are a priori equally likely, that is P (msg = 0) = P (msg = 1) = 0.5.
(b) Based on (a), a reasonable decoding strategy at the receiver is majority rules
— decide 0 if there are more zeros than ones received, and decide 1 otherwise
(we will assume n is odd to avoid ambiguities). Find the probability that this
strategy results in a decoding error with n = 5 and p = 0.05.
(c) Fill in the missing parts of the equation below for general (but odd) repetition
rate n and bit-flip probability p:
(something)
X
P (decoding error) = (some expression which depends on n, p, and k)
k=(something)

(d) With p = 0.05, how large must n be in order for the majority-rules decoder to
achieve a probability of error that is less than 10−4 ?

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