Mathematical Methods for Natural Sciences :

HOMEWORK 2

Due 11:00 Monday 20th November, hand in a paper copy at the start of the lecture.
The numbers in square brackets in the right-hand margin indicate the provisional
maximum credit per section of a question. Show all your working, and consider
carefully how you structure your answers. Marks will be deducted for lack of
clarity/completeness. Give answers to 3 s.f. unless indicated otherwise.

1. A coin is tossed 50 times and the number of heads is counted, find the probability
of:

(a) 25 heads, if the coin is fair. [2]

(b) the first 25 coin tosses producing only heads and then no more heads are seen,
if the coin is fair. [2]
(c) 30 heads, if the probability of a heads is three times that of tails. [2]
(d) the number of heads required to show the coin is biased towards heads, at the
95% confidence level - consider both one and two tailed tests. [3]

2. The probability of waiting more than 30 seconds for the lights to change at a road
crossing is 0.09.

(a) If the waiting time is Normally distributed, with standard deviation 5, what
is mean waiting time (giving answer to 3 s.f.)? [3]
(b) If the waiting time is Normally distributed, with mean waiting time 20
seconds, what is the standard deviation (giving answer to 3 s.f.)? [2]

3. The number of mistakes made in a quilt factory is found on average to be one in

every batch of 10,000 items made, given this:

(a) Find the probability that in a batch of 30,000 quilts there will be at least 1
error, to 3.s.f. [2]
(b) If the factory produces 4 batches each of 10,000 quilts, find the probability
that each contains at least 1 error. [2]

1
 (c) If an inspector claims that, because a batch of 10,000 quilts contained 3
mistakes, the factory machines need re-configuring. Argue whether this is
true or not at the 5% significance level. [2]
(d) Find the two values for the average number of mistakes per batch, that would
produce a 10% probability of finding exactly two mistakes in a randomly
chosen batch of 10,000 quilts (giving your answers to 1 d.p.). [4]

4. Hydrogen nuclei in living tissue placed into an NMR machine can become arranged
using a large external magnetic field. Their spins can be either be aligned spin up
or spin down, depending on their energy. At room temperature, there are equal
numbers of spin up and spin down nuclei.

(a) Starting with just four nuclei, find the probability that at least one is aligned
spin up. [1]
(b) Now consider 100 nuclei, find the probability that at least 40 are aligned spin
up. [2]
(c) Approximate the previous two answers using a Poisson distribution with
suitably chosen value of and find the size of the error using this kind of
approximation in each case. [3]
(d) Approximate the same two answers using a Normal distribution with
suitably chosen values of , and find the size of the error using this kind of
approximation in each case. [3]

5. A rare bird sanctuary rears six birds per year in their natural nests. One cold
winter it is decided to keep them in an incubator instead and now eight birds are
found to have hatched after this.

(a) Assuming the number of birds reared follows a Poisson distribution, argue at
the 95% confidence level whether or not there is an increase in the number of
birds reared due to the incubator. Ensure you state your hypotheses clearly. [2]
(b) Calculate the smallest number of birds born in the incubator that would just
be inside the 5% significance level and calculate the probability of a Type I
error in this case (to 3 s.f.). [2]
(c) Given that another bird sanctuary rears many more birds using an incubator
and finds that actually nine birds per year are reared in this way, find the
probability of a Type II error (to 3 s.f.). [3]