MATH 2260 - Winter 2015 - Practice for Term Test 1

1. The data below represent the cost of course materials for 25 different Douglas College courses:

33 128 186 99 84
168 134 56 21 144
64 125 49 78 100
52 60 29 170 77
41 166 141 111 89

(a) Create a histogram of the data using 5 classes of equal width. Your first class should
begin with $20.
(b) Describe the distribution of the cost of course materials. Would the mean or median
provide a more accurate reflection of the average cost of course materials?

2. The amount of water (in gallons) consumed by 24 elephants in one day is given below:

26 29 33 35 34 47 43 38 35 69 45 60 46 51

(a) Make a stemplot of the given data.

(b) How would you describe the overall shape of the distribution (uniform, symmetric,
skewed)? If it is skewed, state the direction of skew.
(c) Which measure of center would be the best to use for this distribution? Why?
(d) Find the five-number summary for the data set and draw a box plot on an appropriate
set of axes. Does the box plot agree with the shape you predicted? Explain.
(e) Are any potential outliers in the data set? Justify your answer with appropriate calcula-
tions.
(f) What range of values from the data set represents the amount of water the lower 75% of
the elephant distribution consumes a day?

3. Answer the following questions with a short response.

(a) Of the 750 players in the National Hockey League (NHL), only 236 made more than the
league average salary of $1.8 million. Is this the mean or median salary for NHL players?
Explain.
(b) A reporter wants to portray doctors in B.C. as overpaid. Which measure of center should
he report as the average salary of the doctors? Explain.
(c) An internet site compares the strokes per round of two professional golfers. Which golfer
is more consistent? Explain.

A B
Mean= 71.5 strokes Mean=70.1 strokes
Standard deviation= 2.3 strokes Standard deviation =1.2 strokes
4. The age of supreme court justices in Canada is listed below:

73 78 68 62 61 58 49 65 59 64

(a) Find the mean age of the judges by hand. Show all your work.
(b) Find the sample standard deviation of the ages. Show all your work.

5. You have torn a tendon and are facing surgery to repair it. The surgeon explains to you:
infection occurs in 3% of such operations, the repair fails in 14%, and both infection and
failure occur together in 1%. What percent of these operations succeed and are free from
infection?
6. Shaya has noticed that on his drive to work there are several things that can slow him down.
First, he hits a red light at Main Street with probability 0.3. If he hits the red light, then he
also has to stop for the commuter train with probability 0.4. If he doesnt hit the red light he
only has to stop for the commuter train with probability 0.2.
(a) Find the probability that Shaya has to stop for both the red light and the train.

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 (b) Find the probability that Shaya has to stop for the red light, given that he has to stop
for the commuter train.
(c) What is the probability that Shaya will have to stop for the train on the way to work?
(d) Are the events R = stopping for the red light and T = stopping for the train independent?
Explain why or why not.

7. Suppose events A and B are independent with P (A) = 0.5 and P (B) = 0.4. Find P (A B).
8. Let X, Y , Z be coins in a box. Suppose X is a fair coin, Y is a two-headed coin, and Z is
weighted so that the probability of heads is 1/3. A coin is selected at random and is tossed.
(a) Make a tree diagram for the possible outcomes.
(b) Find the probability that heads is obtained.
(c) If heads appears, find the probability that it came from the fair coin, X.
(d) If tails appears, find the probability that it came from coin Z.
(e) Are the probabilities for getting a heads for each coin independent? Explain.
(f) Using this example describe a disjoint event.
9. How many different teams can a basketball coach start if the entire team has 10 players and
each player can play any position?
10. A ship carries five different colored flags. In how many ways can the ship send a signal by
hoisting three flags in different orders?

11. A bag contains 20 tennis balls and 4 are defective. If two balls are drawn at random, what is
the probability that both a defective?
12. A company inspects three light bulbs in a batch of ten. If one bulb is defective, the batch is
thrown away. Suppose the batch has two defective bulbs. What is the probability that the
batch will be thrown away?
13. Answer the following probability questions
(a) A multiple choice test consists of 10 questions, each with choices a, b, c and d. If you
guess an answer for each of the questions what is the probability of getting 2 or fewer
questions correct?
(b) If 8.3% of adults are left-handed, what is the probability that in a random group of 500
adults 45 or more will be left-handed?
14. Prove that if A, B are independent events, then A0 and B are independent events.

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Solutions (c) P (X|H) = 11
4
(d) P (Z|T ) =
1. (a) Class size of $34. 7
(e) Yes the probabilities are independent
(b) The distribution is non-symmetric, but
since the outcome of one coin toss doesnt
nearly uniform. It could also be con-
affect the probabilities of the others.
sidered right-skewed.
(f) Getting heads on coin X and heads on
2 6 9 coin Y at the same time.
3 3 5485
2. (a) 4 7 356 9. Since position order doesnt matter, 10 C5 =
5 1 252
6 9 0
10. Flag order matters, 5 P3 = 60
(b) Right-Skewed
4 C2 3
(c) Median, better for non-symmetric dis- 11. P (both) = =
tributions 20 C2 95

(d) min=26, Q1 = 34, M = 41.5, Q3 = 8 C3

12. P (at least one) = 1P (none) = 1 =
47, max=69. Box plot also shows right 10 C3
skew of distribution. 7 8
1 =
15 15
(e) IQR = 13, lower limit = 14.5, upper
limit = 66.5. The value of 69 falls out- 13. (a) P (X 2) = 0.5256.
side of the upper limit, so it is an out- (b) P (z 0.57) = 0.2843.
lier.
14. Note A0 B + A B = B. Then P (A0
(f) Any value below Q3 falls in the bot-
B) + P (A B) = P (B) since A0 B, A B
tom 75% of the sample. 26-47 repre-
are disjoint sets. Use this result to show
sents the lower 75%.
that P (A0 B) = P (A0 )P (B).
3. (a) This average is the means salary. It
cannot be the median because there
are only 236 players above this value.
If it were the median there would be
375 players on either side of the value.
(b) Since he wants to represent them as
overpaid, he should use the mean. The
mean is non-resistive and would be
pulled toward any higher salaries that
doctors might make, making the aver-
age look higher.
(c) The second golfer is more consistent,
since their standard deviation is lower.
This means there is less spread in the
distribution, so the actual data values
will be closer to the mean value than
for the first golfer.
4. (a) x = 63.7 years.
(b) s = 8.111 years.
5. Non mutually exclusive events, A: infec-
tion, B: failure. P (A0 B 0 ) = 0.84
6. (a) P (R T ) = 0.12
(b) P (R|T ) = 0.4615
(c) Count all mutually exclusive events:
P (T ) = 0.12 + 0.14 = 0.26
(d) They are not independent events. Stop-
ping for a red light does influence the
probability of stopping for a train.
7. P (A B) = 0.7
8. (a)
1 1 1 11
(b) P (H) = 6 + 3 + 9 = 18