The University of Texas at Dallas

School of Management
Syam Menon Advanced
MIS 6334 Business Intelligence

Additional Probability Questions

1. The UTD chess team is playing in a four team tournament. In the first round they have any easy opponent
that they will beat 80% of the time. If they win that game, they will play against a tougher team where their
probability of success is 0.4. What is the probability that they will win the tournament?
2. Two masked robbers try to rob a crowded bank during the lunch hour but the teller presses a button that sets
off an alarm and locks the front door. The robbers, realizing that they are trapped, throw away their masks
and disappear into the chaotic crowd. Confronted with 40 people claiming they are innocent, the police give
everyone a lie detector test. Suppose that guilty people are detected with probability 0.95 by the test, and that
innocent people appear guilty when tested with probability 0.1. What is the probability Mr. Jones is guilty
given that he appears to be when tested?
3. In the California gubernatorial election in 1982, there were only two candidates, Tom Bradley and George
Deukmejian. Several TV stations predicted, on the basis of questioning people when they exited the polling
place, that Tom Bradley, then mayor of Los Angeles, would win the election. When the votes were counted,
however, he lost by a considerable margin. Can you explain what happened, given the following assumptions:
There is a 45% chance that someone will vote for Bradley, and 40% of Bradley voters will respond compared
to 30% of the Deukmejian voters.
4. In Orange County, 51% of the adults are males (It doesnt take advanced mathematics to deduce that the other
49% are females.). One adult is randomly selected for a survey involving credit card usage.
(a) Find the prior probability that the selected person is male.
(b) It is later learned that the selected subject was smoking a cigar. Based on data from the Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Services Administration, 9.5% of males smoke cigars, while 1.7% of females smoke
cigars. Use this additional information to find the probability that the selected subject is male.
5. Use the Bayesian network and associated conditional probability table below to calculate the following proba-

bilities.

A B Node (Conditional)Probability Value

A P(A = True) 0.3

B P(B = True) 0.6




C P(C = True | A = True) 0.8
C D C P(C = True | A = False) 0.4

D P(D = True | A = True, B = True) 0.7

D P(D = True | A = True, B = False) 0.8

D P(D = True | A = False, B = True) 0.1
D P(D = True | A = False, B = False) 0.2

E E P(E = True | C = True) 0.7

E P(E = True | C = False) 0.2

Figure 1: Bayesian Network Table 1: Data

(a) P(D = True)

(b) P(D = False, C = True)
(c) P(A = True | C = True)