1.

0 RANDOM VARIABLES
1.1 Introduction
In application of probability, we are often interested in a number associated with the outcome of a random
experiment. Such a quantity whose value is determined by the outcome of a random experiment is called a
random variable. It can also be defined as any quantity or attribute whose value varies from one unit of the
population to another.
A discrete random variable is function whose range is finite and/or countable, i.e it can only assume values
in a finite or countably infinite set of values. A continuous random variable is one that can take any value in
an interval of real numbers. (There are uncountably many real numbers in an interval of positive length.)
1.2 Discrete Random Variables and Probability Mass Function
Consider the experiment of flipping a fair coin three times. The number of tails that appear is noted as a
discrete random variable. X= number of tails that appear in 3 flips of a fair coin.
There are 8 possible outcomes of the experiment: namely the sample space consists of

More generally, let X have the following properties

i) It is a discrete variable that can only assume values x1, x2,……. Xn

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1.6 Expectation and Variance of a Random Variable
1.6.1 Expected Values
One of the most important things we'd like to know about a random variable is: what value does it take on
average? What is the average price of a computer? What is the average value of a number that rolls on a
die? The value is found as the average of all possible values, weighted by how often they occur (i.e.
probability)

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1.6.2 Variance and Standard Deviation

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 2.0 PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTIONS
2.1 Discrete Distribution
Among the discrete distributions that we will look at includes the Bernoulli, binomial, Poisson, geometric and
hyper-geometric
2.1.1 Bernoulli distribution
Definition: A Bernoulli trial is a random experiment in which there are only two possible outcomes - success
and failure e.g
 Tossing a coin and considering heads as success and tails as failure.
 Checking items from a production line: success = not defective, failure = defective.
 Phoning a call centre: success = operator free; failure = no operator free.

2.1.2 Binomial Distribution

Consider a sequence of n independent, Bernoulli trials, with each trial having two possible outcomes,
success or failure. Let p be the probability of a success for any single trial. Let X denote the number of
successes on n trials. The random variable X is said to have a binomial distribution and has probability
mass function
𝑛
𝑃(𝑋 = 𝑥) = 𝑥𝐶 𝑝 𝑥 (1 − 𝑝)𝑛−𝑥 for x = 0, 1, 2,….n
𝑛!
Where 𝑛𝑥𝐶 = (𝑛−𝑥)!𝑥!
and 𝑞 = (1 − 𝑝), p is probability of success and q probability of failure.

In general,
𝑛!
𝑃(𝑋 = 𝑥) = (𝑛−𝑥)!𝑥!
𝑝 𝑥 𝑞 𝑛−𝑥 , where n is the number of trials.

The mean and variance of a binomial random variable are represented by;
𝜇 = 𝑛𝑝 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝜎 2 = 𝑛𝑝𝑞

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Example 3

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Exercise
1. A fair coin is tossed 10 times. What is the probability that exactly 6 heads will occur?
2. If 3% of the electric bulbs manufactured by a company are defective find the probability that in a
sample of 100 bulbs exactly 5 bulbs are defective.
3. An oil exploration firm is formed with enough capital to finance 10 explorations. The probability of a
particular exploration being successful is 0.1. Find mean and variance of the number of successful
explorations.
4. A coin is loaded so that heads has 60% chance of showing up. This coin is tossed 3 times.
a) What is the mean and the standard deviation of the number of heads that turned out?
b) What is the probability that the head turns out at least twice?
c) What is the probability that an odd number of heads turn out in 3 flips?
5. According to the 2009 current Population Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, 40% of the
U.S. population 25 years old and above have completed a bachelor’s degree or more. Given a random
sample of 50 people 25 years old or above, what is expected number of people and the standard
deviation of the number of people who have completed a bachelor’s degree.

2.1.3 Poisson distribution

Named after the French mathematician Simeon Poisson, the distribution is used to model the number of
events, (such as the number of telephone calls at a business, number of customers in waiting lines, number
of defects in a given surface area, airplane arrivals, or the number of accidents at an intersection), occurring
within a given time interval. Other such random events where Poisson distribution can apply includes;
 the number of hits to your web site in a day
 the number of calls that arrive in each day on your mobile phone
 the rate of job submissions in a busy computer centre per minute.
 the number of messages arriving to a computer server in any one hour.

Poisson probabilities are useful when there are a large number of independent trials with a small probability
of success on a single trial and the variables occur over a period of time. It can also be used when a density

Probability distributions pg. 12

of items is distributed over a given area or volume. The formula for the Poisson probability mass function is

This is abbreviated as is the shape parameter which indicates the average number of events
in the given time interval. The mean and variance of this distribution are equal ie

Properties of Poisson

 The sum of independent Poisson variables is a further Poisson variable with mean equal to the sum
of the individual means.
 As well as cropping up in the situations already mentioned, the Poisson distribution provides an
approximation for the Binomial distribution.

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Exercise
1. Customers arrive at a checkout counter according to a Poisson distribution at an average of 7 per
hour. During a given hour, what are the probabilities that
a) No more than 3 customers arrive?
b) At least 2 customers arrive?
c) Exactly 5 customers arrive?
2. Manufacturer of television set knows that on an average 5% of their product is defective. They sells
television sets in consignment of 100 and guarantees that not more than 2 set will be defective. What
is the probability that the TV set will fail to meet the guaranteed quality?
3. Suppose that the change of an individual coal miner being killed in a mining accident during a year
is 1.1499. Use the Poisson distribution to calculate the probability that in the mine employing 350
miners- there will be at least one accident in a year.
4. The number of road construction projects that take place at any one time in a certain city follows a
Poisson distribution with a mean of 3. Find the probability that exactly five road construction
projects are currently taking place in this city. (0.100819)
5. The number of road construction projects that take place at any one time in a certain city follows a
Poisson distribution with a mean of 7. Find the probability that more than four road construction
projects are currently taking place in the city. (0.827008)

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 Normal distribution
Introduction
The normal, or Gaussian, distribution is one of the most important distributions in probability theory. It is
widely used in statistical inference. One reason for this is that sums of random variables often
approximately follow a normal distribution.

Properties of normal distribution

 The normal distribution curve is bell-shaped and symmetric, about the mean
 The curve is asymptotic to the horizontal axis at the extremes.
 The highest point on the normal curve is at the mean, which is also the median and mode.
 The mean can be any numerical value: negative, zero, or positive
 The standard deviation determines the width of the curve: larger values result in wider, flatter curves
 Probabilities for the normal random variable are given by areas under the curve. The total area under
the curve is 1 (0.5 to the left of the mean and 0.5 to the right).
 It has inflection points at 𝜇 − 𝜎 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝜇 + 𝜎
 Empirical Rule:

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Standard normal probability distribution
A random variable having a normal distribution with a mean of 0 and a variance of 1 is said to have a standard
normal probability distribution
Definition The random variable Z is said to have the standard normal distribution if 𝑍 ~ 𝑁(0,1). Therefore, the
density of Z, which is usually denoted ∅(𝑧) is given by;
1 2
1
∅(𝑧) = 𝑒 {−2𝑧 }
for −∞ < 𝑧 < ∞
√2𝜋

The cumulative distribution function of a standard normal random variable is denoted , and is given by
𝑧
Φ(𝑧) = ∫−∞ ∅(𝑡) 𝑑𝑡

Computing of normal probabilities

It is very important to understand how the standardized normal distribution works, so we will spend some time
here going over it. There is no simple analytic expression for in terms of elementary functions. but the values of
Φ(𝑧) has been exhaustively tabulated. This greatly simplifies the task of computing normal probabilities.
A standardized table is attached at the end of this chapter reports the cumulative normal probabilities for
normally distributed variables in standardized form (i.e. Z-scores). That is, this table reports 𝑃(𝑍 ≥ 𝑧) =
Φ(𝑧)). For a given value of Z, the table reports what proportion of the distribution lies above that value.
Some important mathematical expressions;

𝑃(𝑍 < 𝑧1 ) = 0.5 + 𝑃(𝑍 = 𝑧1 ), 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑃(𝑍 = 𝑧1 ) 𝑖𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒.\

𝑃(𝑍 > 𝑧1 ) = 0.5 − 𝑃(𝑍 = 𝑧1 ), 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑃(𝑍 = 𝑧1 ) 𝑖𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒

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𝑃(𝑧1 ≤ 𝑍 ≤ 𝑧2 ) = 𝑃(𝑍 = 𝑧2 ) − 𝑃(𝑍 = 𝑧1 ), 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 (𝑧2 > 𝑧1 )

𝑃(𝑍 = −𝑧1 ) = 𝑃(𝑍 = 𝑧1 ), 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑃(𝑍 = 𝑧1 ) 𝑖𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 and note we read only positive
values from the table.

𝑃(−𝑧1 ≤ 𝑍 ≤ 𝑧2 ) = 𝑃(𝑍 = 𝑧2 ) + 𝑃(𝑍 = 𝑧1 )

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𝑃(𝑍 > −𝑧1 ) = 0.5 + 𝑃(𝑍 = 𝑧1 ) = 𝑃(𝑍 < 𝑧1 ), 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑃(𝑍 = 𝑧1 ) 𝑖𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒

The General Normal Density

Examples
1. A r.v.x~ 𝑁(50,25), compute 𝑃(45 ≤ 𝑥 ≤ 60).
Solution
𝑥 − 50
𝜇 = 50 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝜎 = 5, 𝑧 = ~𝑁(0,1)
5
45−50 60−50
𝑃(45 ≤ 𝑥 ≤ 60) = 𝑃 ( 5
≤𝑥≤ 5
)

= 𝑃(−1 ≤ 𝑥 ≤ 2)

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 = 𝑃(𝑧 = −1) + 𝑃(𝑧 = 2)
= 0.4773 + 0.3413 (from tables)
= 0.8186
2. Determine the probability that a value of z is greater than 2.5.
Solution

3. The mean diameter of a sample of 400 rollers is 22.50 mm and the standard deviation is 0.50 mm. Rollers
are acceptable with diameters 22.36±0.53 mm. Determine the probability of any roller being within the
acceptable limits.
Solution
𝜇 = 22.50 𝑚𝑚 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝜎 = 0.50 𝑚𝑚
𝑙𝑖𝑚𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑥1 = 22.36 − 0.53 = 21.83 𝑚𝑚
𝑥2 = 22.36 + 0.53 = 22.89 𝑚𝑚
21.83 −22.50 22.89−22.50
𝑃(21.83 ≤ 𝑥 ≤ 22.89) = 𝑃 ( ≤𝑥≤ )
0.50 0.50

= 𝑃(−1.34 ≤ 𝑥 ≤ 0.78)
= 𝑃(𝑧 = −1.34) + 𝑃(𝑧 = 0.78)
= 0.4099 + 0.2823 (From tables)
= 0.6922
Exercise
1. Family income is believed to be normally distributed with a mean of shs 250000 and a standard deviation
of 100000. If the poverty level is 100000, what percentage of the population lives in poverty? A new tax law
is expected to benefit middle income families, those with incomes between shs 200000 and shs 300000.
What percentage of population will benefit from the law?

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2. A thermostat set to switch at 200C operates at a range of temperatures having a mean of 20.40C and a
standard deviation of 1.30C. Determine the probability of its opening at temperatures between 19.50C and
20.50C.

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