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Lecture Notes Probability Theory (5thsem) 3

These class notes are prepared for the 5th semester Non-CBCS students for the paper probability theory according to Gauhati University Syllabus.

Uploaded by

Mriganka
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
168 views

Lecture Notes Probability Theory (5thsem) 3

These class notes are prepared for the 5th semester Non-CBCS students for the paper probability theory according to Gauhati University Syllabus.

Uploaded by

Mriganka
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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LECTURE NOTES

ON PROBABILITY THEORY

Dr. Mriganka Sekhar Dutta


Assistant Professor
Nalbari College
EXAMPLE : How many

words of length k

can be formed from

a set of n (distinct) characters ,

(where k ≤ n ) ,

when letters can be used at most once ?

SOLUTION :
n (n − 1) (n − 2) · · · (n − (k − 1))
= n (n − 1) (n − 2) · · · (n − k + 1)
n!
= ( Why ? )
(n − k)!

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E X A M P L E : Three-letter words are generated randomly from the
five characters a , b , c , d , e , where letters can be used at most
once.

(a) How many three-letter words are there in the sample space S ?
SOLUTION : 5 · 4 · 3 = 60 .

(b) How many words containing a , b are there in S ?


S O L U T I O N : First place the characters
a,b
i.e., select the two indices of the locations to place them.
This can be done in

3 × 2 = 6 ways . ( Why ? )
There remains one position to be filled with a c , d or an e .
Therefore the number of words is 3 × 6 = 18 .

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(c) Suppose the 60 solutions in the sample space are equally likely .

What is the probability of generating a three-letter word that


contains the letters a and b ?

SOLUTION :
18
= 0.3 .
60

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EXERCISE :

Suppose the sample space S consists of all five-letter words


having distinct alphabetic characters .

• How many words are there in S ?

• How many ”special” words are in S for which only the second
and the fourth character are vowels, i.e., one of {a, e, i, o, u, y} ?

• Assuming t he out comes in S to be equally likely, what is the


probability of drawing such a special word?

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Co mb inat io n s

Let S be a set containing n (distinct) elements.

Then
a combination of k elements from S ,
is
any selection of k elements from S ,

where order is not important .

(Thus the selection is a set .)

N O T E : By definition a set always has distinct elements .

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EXAMPLE :

There are three combinations of 2 elements chosen from the set

S = {a , b , c} ,

namely, the subsets


{a, b} , {a, c} , {b, c} ,

whereas there are six words of 2 elements from S ,

namely,

ab , ba , ac , ca , bc , cb .

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In general, given
a set S of n elements ,

the number of possible subsets of k elements from S equals

𝑛 n! .
≡
𝑘 k! (n − k)!

R E M A R K : The notation 𝑛 is referred to as


𝑘
”n choose k ”.

𝑛 n! n!
NOTE : = = = 1,
𝑘 n! (n − n)! n ! 0!

since 0! ≡ 1 (by “convenient definition” !) .

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PROOF :

First recall that there are

n!
n (n − 1) (n − 2) · · · (n − k + 1) =
(n − k)!

possible sequences of k distinct elements from S .

However, every sequence of length k has k! permutations of itself,


and each of these defines the same subset of S .

Thus the total number of subsets is

n! 𝑛
≡
k! (n − k)! 𝑘

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