BUSINESS STATISTICS II

Problems on Probability

1. Answer the following :

(a) Find the probability of drawing a heart from a well shuffled pack of cards ?
(b) From a well shuffled pack of cards, what is the probability that it is a queen ?
(c) A dice is thrown in the air, what is the probability of a number between 2 and 5
coming upward ?
(d) A bag contains 3 red, 1 black and 5 green balls. Find the probability of drawing a
red ball from this bag ?
(e) A coin is tossed a number of times. Find the probability of tail coming upward in a
single toss ?

2. Two unbiased dice are thrown. Find the probability that sum of the faces is not less than
10.

3. Find the probability of getting a total score of 8 when two dice are thrown.

4. Find the probability of getting a doublet, when two dice are thrown.

5. A coin is tossed four times. Find the probability of getting a head all the four times.

6. Find the probability of getting at least one head when tossing five coins.

7. Two cards are drawn from a pack of cards. Find the probability that the two cards are
kinds.

8. What is the chance of picking a spade or an ace not of spade, from a pack of 52 cards
?

9. A card is drawn from a standard pack of playing cards and then another card is drawn
without the first being replaced. What is the probability of getting (I) two aces (ii) two
spades ?

10. A bag contains 8 white and 3 red balls. Two balls are drawn at random. Find the
probability that (I) both are white (ii) both are red (iii) one white and one red.

11. A bag contains 5 white, 7 black and 4 red balls. 3 balls are drawn from it at
random. Find the probability that all the three balls are white.

12. Three cards are drawn from a pack of cards. Find the probability that they are a King,
Queen and a Knave ?

13. A man draws at random 3 balls from a bag containing 6 Red and 5 White balls. What
is the chance of getting the balls all red ?
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14. What is the probability that :

(a) A non-leap year should have (I) 53 Sundays (ii) 52 Sunday.
(b) A leap year should have (I) 53 Mondays (ii) 52 Mondays.

15. A bag contains 5 White and 3 Black balls. Two balls are drawn at random one after
the other without replacement. Find the probability that the balls drawn are black ?

16. One number is selected at random from 1 to 100. Find the probability that it is a
perfect square.

17. A bag contains 20 tickets marked with numbers 1 to 20. One ticket is drawn at
random, find the probability that it will be a multiple of (I) 2 or 5 (ii) 3 or 5.

18. There are 17 balls numbered 1 to 17 in a bag. If a person selects one ball at random,
what is the probability that the number printed on the ball will be an even number greater
than 9 ?

19. If A, B and C are mutually exclusive and exhaustive events, find P (B) if 1/3 P (C) =
1/2 P (A) = P (B).\

20. A, B and C are bidding for a contract. It is believed that A has exactly half the chance
that B has, B , in turn, is 4/5th as likely as C to win the contract. What is the
probability for each to win the contract ?

21. Two letters are drawn at random from the word HOME. Write down the sample space.
Now find the probability that (I) both the letters are vowels, (ii) atleast 1 is a vowel, (iii)
one of the letters chosen is M.

22. In a committee consisting of 25 members, everyone is proficient in Mathematics or

Statistics or both. Among them, 19 members are proficient in Mathematics and 16 are
proficient in Statistics. If a person is chosen at random from the committee, find the
probability that the member is proficient in both Mathematics and Statistics.

23. A bag contains 5 green, 4 black and 6 white balls. A ball is drawn at random. Find
the probability that it is either a green ball or a white ball.

24. If a single draw is made from a pack of 52 cards, what is the probability of securing
either an ace of spaces or a jack of clubs ?

25. A fair die is thrown. Write down the sample space. What is the chance that either an
odd number of a number greater than 4 will turn up.

26. If a pair of dice is thrown, find the probability that the sum is neither 7 nor 11.
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27. In survey of 100 readers, it was found that 40 read magazine A, 15 read magazine
B and 10 read both. What is the probability of a person reading atleast one of the
magazines.

28. A can solve 80 % of the problems given in Statistics book, while B can solve 60 %.
What is the probability at atleast one of them will solve a problem selected at random.

29. The odds against A solving a problem are 8 to 6 and odds in favour of B solving the
same problem are 14 to 10. What is the probability that if both of them try, it will be
solved ?

30. A speaks the truth in 75 % of the cases and B in 80 % of the cases. Find the
percentage of cases in which they are likely to contradict each other in stating the same
fact.

31. The odds against a certain event are 5 to 3 and the odds in favour of another event
are 2 to 5. Find the probability that at least one of the events will happen ?

32. Bag contains 3 white and 2 black balls. Bag B contains 2 white and 4 black balls.
One of the bags is chosen at random and a ball is drawn from it. Find the probability that
the ball is white ?

33. A bag contains 5 Red and 4 Black balls. A ball is drawn at random, from the bag and
put into another bag which contains 3 Red and 7 Black balls. A ball is drawn
randomly from the second bag. What is the probability that it is red ?

34. The probability that an event A happens in one trial of an experiment is 0.4. Three
independent trials of the experiment are performed. Find the probability that the event A
happens at least once ?

35. Three fair coins are tossed once. Find the probability of (I) at least one head (ii)
exactly one tail ?

36. A coin is tossed three times in succession. What is the probability of the tosses coming
in the order (a) Head, Tail, Head (b) Head, Head, Head (c) 2 Heads and tail ?

37. A husband and wife appear in an interview for two vacancies in the same post. The
probability of husband’s selection is 1/7 and that of wife’s selection is 1/5. What is
the probability that (I) both of them will be selected (ii) both of them will be rejected
(iii) only one of them will be selected ?
38. The probability that a contractor will get a plumbing contract is 2/3 and the probability
that he will not get an electric contract is 5/9. If the probability of getting any one
contract is 4/5, what is the probability that he will get both the contracts ?
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39. A candidate is interviewed for 3 posts. For the first post, there are 3 candidates, for
the second, there are 4 and for the third, there are 2. What are the chances of his
getting at least one post ?

40. A problem in Statistics is given to five students A, B, C, D and E. Their chances of

solving it are 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5 and 1/6. What is the probability that the problem will
be solved.

41. There are 100 students in a class of which 36 are boys studying statistics and 13 girls
not studying statistics. If there are 55 girls in all, find the probability that a boy picked at
random is not studying statistics ?

42. An electronic device is made up of three components A, B and C. The probability of

failure of component A is 0.01, that of B is 0.1 and that of C is 0.02 in some fixed
period of time. Find the probability that the device will work satisfactorily during that
period of time assuming that the components work independently of one another.

43. A class consists of 100 students, 25 of them are girls and 75 boys. 20 of them are
rick and remaining poor. 40 of them are fair complexioned. What is the probability of
selecting a fair complexioned rich girl ?

44. A University has to select an examiner from the list of 50 persons, 20 of them are
women and 30 men, 10 of them knowing Hindi and 40 not, 15 of them being
teachers and the remaining 35 not. What is the probability of the University selecting a
Hindi knowing woman teacher ?

45. A salesman is known to sell a product in 3 out of 5 attempts while another salesman in
2 out of 5 attempts. Find the probability that (I) no sale will be affected when they
both try to sell the product and (ii) either of them will succeed in selling the product ?

46. Suppose it is 11 to 5 against a person who is now 38 years of age living till he is 73.
and 5 to 3 against B, now 43, living till he is 78, find the probability that at least
one of these persons will be living 35 years hence.

47. Find the probability that an assessee files his tax return and cheats on it, given that
70 % of all assessees file returns and 25 % of those who file cheat.

48. A group of 200 persons was classified according to age and sex as given below :
Age in years Male Female Total
Below 30 60 50 110
30 and above 80 10 90
 Total 140 60 200
(i) What is the probability that a randomly chosen person from this group is a male
below 30 years of age ?
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(ii) What is the probability that a person is below 30 years of age given that he is a
male ?

49. The personal department of a company has records which show the following analysis of
its 200 engineers :
Age Bachelors degree only Masters degree Total
Under 30 90 10 100
30 to 40 20 30 50
Over 40 40 10 50
Total 150 50 200
If one engineer is selected at random from the company find (I) the probability that he
has only a bachelor’s degree (ii) the probability that he has a master’s degree, given
that he is over 40 (iii) the probability that he is under 30, given that he has only
bachelor’s degree.

50. Two sets of candidates are competing for the positions on the Board of Directors of a
company. The probabilities that the first and second sets will win are 0.6 and 0.4
respectively. If the first set wins, the probability of introducing a new product is 0.8 and
the corresponding probability, if the second set wins, is 0.3. What is the probability that
the new product will be introduced ? Given that a new product is introduced, what is the
chance that the first set of candidates have won ?

51. A company has three plants to manufacture 8,000 scooters in a month, out of 8,000
scooters, Plant I , Plant II and Plant III manufacture 4,000 , 3,000 and 1,000
scooters respectively. At Plant I, 85 out of 100 scooters are rated of standard quality
or better, at plant II only 65 out of 100 scooters are rated of standard quality or better
and at Plant III only 60 out of 100 scooters are rated of standard quality or better.
What is the probability that the scooters selected at random came from (I) Plant I (ii)
Plant II and (iii) Plant III, if it is known that the scooter is of standard quality.

52. A factory has two machines. Empirical evidence has established that machines I and II
produce 30 % and 70 % of output respectively. It has also been established that 5 %
and 1 % of the output produced by these machines respectively was defective. A
defective item is drawn at random. What is the probability that the defective item was
produced by Machine I or Machine II.

53. The chance that a doctor will diagnose a disease correctly is 60 %. The chance that of
patient will die by his treatment after correct diagnosis is 40 % and the chance of death
by wrong diagnosis is 70 %. A patient, who had the disease died, what is the chance
that the disease was correctly diagnosed ?

54. Suppose that there is a chance for a newly constructed fly over to collapse, whether the
design is faulty or not. The chance that the design is faulty is 5 %. The chance that the
 flyover collapses if the design is faulty is 95 %, otherwise it is 30 %.. A flyover
collapsed, what is the probability that it is collapsed because of faulty design ?

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55. In a certain town, males and females form 50 % of the population. It is known that
20 % of the males and 5 % of the females are unemployed. A research student
studying unemployment situations selects unemployed persons at random. What is the
probability that the person selected is (I) male (ii) female ?

56. If it rains, a taxi driver can earn Rs. 100 per day. If it is fair, he can lose Rs. 10 per
day. If the probability of rain is 0.4, what is his expectation of earning ?

57. The probability known is 0.99 that a 30 year old man will survive one year more. An
insurance company offers to sell such a man Rs. 10,000 one year term insurance policy
at a premium of Rs. 110. What is the insurance company’s expected gain ?

58. A product consists of two parts A and B. The manufacturing process of each part is
such that the probability of defect in A is 0.12 and that in B is 0.07. If 100 units are
assembled with A and B, how many units are expected to be free from defects ?