Communication Theory ( ECN-210 )

Tutorial Sheet 2

Date of Issue: August 17 Date of Submission: August 17

Q1.Three fair dice are rolled. What is the probability that the sum of the three outcomes is 10
given that the three dice show different outcomes?
Q2.A bag contains four balls. One is blue, one is white and two are red. Someone draws
together two balls at random from the bag. He looks at the balls and tells you that there is
a red ball among the two balls drawn out. What is the probability the other ball drawn out
is also red?
Q3.A fair coin is tossed n times. What is the probability of heads on the first toss given that r
heads were obtained in the n tosses?
Q4.A hand of 13 cards is dealt from a standard deck of 52 cards. What is the probability that
it contains more aces than tens? How does this probability change when you have the
information that the hand contains at least one ace?
Q5.
(a) A fair coin is tossed three times. Let X be the number of heads among the first two
tosses and Y be the number of heads among the last two tosses. What is the joint
probability mass function of X and Y ? What is E(XY )?

(b) You have two fair coins. The first coin is tossed five times. Let the random variable X
be the number of heads showing up in these five tosses. The second coin is tossed X
times. Let Y be the number of heads showing up in the tosses of the second coin. What
is the joint probability mass function of X and Y ? What is E(X + Y )?
Q6. The random variables X and Y are independent and exponentially distributed with
parameter μ. Let V = X + Y and W = X /(X+Y) . What is the joint density of V and W?
Prove that V and W are independent.
Q7. Accidentally, two depleted batteries got into a set of five batteries. To remove the two
depleted batteries, the batteries are tested one by one in a random order. Let the random
variable X denote the number of batteries that must be tested to find the two depleted
batteries. What is the probability mass function of X?
Q8.A bag contains R red balls and W white balls. Each time you take one ball out of the bag
at random and without replacement. You stop as soon as all red balls have been taken out
of the bag. What is the expected number of white balls remaining in the bag when you
stop?
Q9.You first roll a fair die once. Next you roll the die as many times as the outcome of this
first roll. Let the random variable X be the total number of sixes in all the rolls of the die,
including the first roll. What is the probability mass function of X?

Q10. You and your friend both draw a random number from 1, 2, . . . , 10 at the same
time and independently of each other. This procedure is repeated until you have drawn one
of the four numbers 1, . . . , 4 or your friend has drawn one of the six numbers 5, . . . , 10.
The first player to get one of his marked numbers is the winner with the convention that
you are the winner if a tie occurs. What is your probability of winning the game? What is
the probability mass function of the length of the game?

Q11. Let X and Y be independent random variables, where X is binomially distributed

with parameters n and p and Y is binomially distributed with parameters m and p.

(a) Explain in terms of Bernoulli experiments that X + Y is binomially distributed with

parameters n + m and p. Next give a formal proof.

(b) Verify that for fixed k the probabilities P(X = j | X + Y = k) for j = 0, . . . , k constitute
a hypergeometric distribution.