Essential Quantitative Skills for

Business

Module (7)
Probability Distributions

By : ALI ADEL ALI ALI IBRAHIM

Probability Distributions
Problem#1:
You flip a fair coin 10 times. What is the
probability that it lands on heads exactly 5
times?
The probability of exactly 5 heads is ??
What is the probability that it lands on heads
at least 5 times?

Probability Distributions
Solution#1:
Well since the coin is fair, all possible outcomes
(in other words a string of 10 H's and T's) are
equally probable. To figure out the probability that
the outcome will contain exactly 5 Heads, we
need to count up the number of outcomes that
contain exactly 5 heads, and divide that number
by the number of total outcomes.
The number of total outcomes is easy 2^10 =
1024.

Probability Distributions
Cont.Solution#1:
The number of outcomes with exactly 5 Heads is
10 choose 5
= 10! / (5! * 5!)
= (10 * 9 * 8 * 7 * 6) / (5 * 4 * 3 * 2 *1)
= 252
So the probability of exactly 5 heads is 252/1024
= 63 / 256 or slightly less than 25%
Given this result, if we want to determine the
probability of at least 5 heads we could do it the
long way (add up the number of out comes of

Probability Distributions
Cont.Solution#1:
Notice that the number of ways to get 6 heads is
10 choose 6 which is equal to 10 choose 4 which
is equal to the number of ways to get 4 heads.
Similarly 7 heads and 3 heads match up as do 8
and 2, 9 and 1, and finally 10 and 0.
This means the number of ways of getting
6,7,8,9, or 10 heads is equal to the number of
ways of getting 0,1,2,3, or 4 heads. and adding
both of these sets of outcomes up adds up to the
number of outcomes that do not contain exactly 5
heads.

Probability Distributions
Cont.Solution#1:
So the number of outcomes with more than 5
heads (i.e. 6 through 10 heads) is equal to one
half of [1024 (total outcomes) - 252 (total number
of outcomes with exactly 5 Heads]
= 1/2 * (1024 - 252)
= 772/2
= 386

Probability Distributions
Cont.Solution#1:
Adding to this the number of outcomes with
exactly 5 heads we get the number of outcomes
with at least 5 heads
= 386 + 252
= 638
And converting it to a probability we divide by the
total number of outcomes (1024)
= 638/1024 = 319/512 or about 61 percent

Probability Distributions
Problem#2:
Probability of exactly two heads in four coin
flips?

Probability Distributions
Solution#2: