.
This exam was given on February 27, 1992. That's 2 and a half weeks later than this year. As a result, some of the questions require Chapter 3 material to solve.
Problem 1. Baseball
Two teams (X and Y) play a series of games until one of the teams has won 3 games. (This is commonly called a ``best-of-5'' series, although it is often over in less than 5 games).
a) Explicitly write down the sample space (i.e. list all the possible outcomes).
b) Let A be the event that team X wins the series, and B be the event
that team Y wins the first game. Explicitly write down the set
.
c) Assuming that each game is independent of the other games, and that the teams are evenly matched, calculate P(A), P(B), and P(A|B).
Problem 2. Politicians.
Suppose that 60% of all politicians are Democrats, while 40% are Republicans. (We'll ignore independents and third-party candidates in this problem). Suppose that among the Democrats 85% are liars and 15% are truthful, while among the Republicans 90% are liars, and 10% are truthful.
(A word about the accuracy of these numbers. You may think that I've grossly underestimated the number of liars, but I'm including local politicians, who run for offices like county dogcatcher. At least some of them are honest.)
a) What is the probability that a randomly chosen politician is truthful?
b) Given that a certain politician is truthful, what is the probability that he is a Democrat?
Problem 3. Bridge
A bridge hand consists of 13 cards from a standard 52-card deck. You
are dealt one hand. Let A be the event that the hand contains exactly 3
aces. Let B be the event that the hand contains exactly 2 kings. Find P(A),
P(B), and 
. Are A and B independent?
Problem 4. Continuous distributions:
The amount of time it takes a driver to react to a changing stoplight varies from driver to driver, and is (roughly) described by the continuous probability function of the form:
where k is a constant and x is measured in seconds.
a) Find the constant k. (Hint: integrate by parts)
b) Find the probability that a driver takes more than 1 second to react.
Extra credit: Flipping coins:
Players A and B take turns flipping a fair coin, with A going first. The first player to toss a head wins. What is the probability of A winning?