3 11-01-2013 1.

There are two locks on the door and the keys are among the six dierent ones you carry in your pocket. In a hurry you dropped one somewhere. What is the probability that you can still open the door? What is the probability that the rst two keys you try will open the door? 2. Three dice are rolled twice. What is the probability that they show the same numbers (a) if the dice are distinguishable, (b) if they are not. 3. You walk into a party without knowing anyone there. There are six women and four men and you know there are four married couples. In how many ways can you guess who the couples are? What if you know there are exactly three couples? 4. Show that if a group of N men contains N (b1 ) who are bald, N (b2 ) who are bearded, and N (b1 , b2 ) who are bald and bearded, then the number of all men who are bald, bearded, or both is N1 = N (b1 ) + N (b2 ) N (b1 , b2 ). More generally, show that if a group of N objects may each have up to r distinct properties b1 , , br , then the number possessing at least one is N1 =
bi

Assignment 2

N (bi )
bi <bj

N (bi , bj ) + + (1)r1 N (b1 , , br ).

5. Derangements A permutation of the rst n integers is called a derangement if no integer is in its natural position. Thus, (3, 2, 1) is not a derangement of (1, 2, 3), but (2, 3, 1) is a derangement. Suppose one of the n! permutations of (1, , n) is picked at random. Using above result, nd pn , the probability that it is a derangement, and show that as n , pn e1 . 6. You are told that of the four cards face down on the table, two are red and two are black. If you guess all four at random, what is the probability that you get 0, 2, 4 right? 7. An airport shuttle bus makes 4 scheduled stops for 15 passengers. What is the probability that all of them get o at the same stop? What is the probability that someone (at least one person) gets o at each stop? 8. In a draft lottery containing the 366 days of the year (including February 29), what is the probability that the rst 180 days drawn (without replacement of course) are evenly distributed among the 12 months? What is the probability that the rst 30 days drawn contain none from August or September? [Hint: rst choose 15 days from each month.] 9. At a certain resort 20 hotels are there and all with same fares and hence any tourist can occupy any one of the hotel with equal probability but there is no capacity constraint for the hotels. If this assumption is correct, what is the probability that when the rst batch of 30 tourists(assuming all of them are indistinguishable) arrive, no hotel is left vacant? [This model is called the BoseEinstein statistic in physics. If the tourists are treated as distinct persons, it is the older BoltzmannMaxwell statistic; see [Feller 1, II.5].] 10. One hundred shes are caught in a little lake and returned after they are tagged. Later another 100 are caught and found to contain 7 tagged ones. What is the probability of this if the lake contains n shes? [What is your best guess as to the true value of n? The latter is the kind of question asked in statistics.] 11. In each draw of a lottery, an integer is picked independently at random from the rst n integers 1, 2, . . . , n. What is the probability that in a sample of r successive draws the numbers are drawn in a nondecreasing sequence? 12. An urn contains n heliotrope and n tangerine balls. Two balls are removed from the urn together, at random. (a) What is the sample space? (b) What is the probability of drawing two balls of dierent colours? (c) Find the probability pn that the balls are the same colour, and evaluate limn pn . (d) What is the probability that (i) the rst ball is tangerine? (ii) the second ball is tangerine? 13. An urn contains 1000 lottery tickets numbered from 1 to 1000. One is selected at random. A fairground performer oers to pay Rs.30/- to anyone who has already paid him Rs.20/-, if the number on the ticket is divisible by 2, 3, or 5. Would you pay him your Rs.20/- before the draw? (If the ticket number is not divisible by 2, 3, or 5 you lose your Rs.20/-.)[Hint: Use inclusion exclusion principle.]