Guide Problems for Preliminary Exam Topics

1. ^Concrete production may be hampered by shortage of water (E1), sand

(E2), gravel (E3) or cement (E4). The event that concrete cannot be produced
due to material shortage, E is? (2 pts)

2. ^A city has n evacuation routes. Let Ei , i = 1,…,n denote the event that the
i-th route is not available after a hazardous event. The event that people cannot
evacuate, E is? (2 pts)

3. ^The industrial site could accidentally discharge the pollutant X (Event E1). The
water treatment plant may not properly work (Event E2). Billy Butcher will be
exposed to the pollutant if he does not have his own filtering system (Event E3).
The event that Billy Butcher will be exposed to the pollutant X, E is? (2 pts)

4. ^During a hurricane event, a wall/roof panel can fail due to wind pressure (E1)
or missile-like flying objects (E2). The event that a wall panel fails, E is? (2 pts)

5. A bowl contains three M&Ms, one red, one blue and one green. A child selects two M&Ms at random.
What is the probability that at least one is red? (5 pts)

6. Read article from: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad2e5/pdf and determine the:

a) Research question (1 pt)

b) Population (1 pt)

c) Sample (1 pt)

d) Variables and their types (e.g. age - continuous numerical variable) (5 pts)

7. According to Consumer Digest, the probable location of personal computers (PC) in the home is as
follows:

Adult bedroom: 0.03

Child bedroom: 0.15

Other bedroom: 0.14

Office: 0.40

Other rooms: 0.28

a. What is the probability that a PC is in a bedroom?

b. What is the probability that a PC is not in a bedroom?

c. Suppose a household is selected at random from households with a PC; in what room would you
expect to find a PC? (10 pts)

8. Prove that P(A’ ∩ B’) = 1 + P(A∩B) - P(A) - P(B) (10 pts)

9. In a certain assembly plant, 3 machines, B1, B2 and B3 make 30%, 45%, and 25% respectively, of the
products. It is known from past experience that 2%, 3% and 2% of the products made by each machine,
respectively, are defective. Now, suppose that a finished product is randomly selected. If it is defective, what
is the probability that it is made by machine B1? (10 pts)

10. Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car;
behind the others, donkey. You pick a door, say No.1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors,
opens another door, say No.3, which has a donkey. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door
No.2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice? (Whitaker 1990) (10 pts)

11. The water supply of a city relies on both groundwater and surface water. The collection of surface water
is provided by run-of-river draft and also reservoir storage in mountains surrounding the city; in addition,
wells collect groundwater from the coastal aquifer. The operation of the system is influenced by regional
droughts, which occur randomly with an annual frequency of 20%. When a regional drought occurs, there is
a 40% chance that extremely low flows will occur in mountain streams. The drought and low flows can
cause water shortage in the city with a probability of 0.3 due to lack of available water from either of the
source (A). When extremely low flows occur in the mountain streams without affecting water availability,
there is also a 25% chance that groundwater in the coastal aquifer will be polluted by brackish water (B).
When extremely low flows in mountain streams do not occur in a dry year, there is also a 10% chance that
reservoir storage will not be sufficient to meet target release (C). Assume that the occurrence of either A, B
or C yields water shortage in the city, estimate the probability that a water shortage occurs in a year. (Hint:
Law of total probability) ( max bonus 10 pts)

^Questions from Junho Song’s lecture: http://ocw.snu.ac.kr/sites/default/files/NOTE/CM05.pdf (2010)

When the information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do?

– probably from John Maynard Keynes (no evidence yet for this)