Mathematics - III (MA2103): Tutorial Sheet 1
Assignment Submission Deadline: 27/08/2025
† Problems to be submitted as Assignment
(1) Let A and B be two finite sets, with |A| = m and |B| = n.
(a) How many distinct functions can be defined from A to B?
(b) How many distinct one-to-one functions can be defined from A to B?
(2) An urn consists of 30 red balls and 70 green balls. What is the probability of getting
exactly k (0 ≤ k ≤ 20) red balls in a sample of size 20
(a) Sampling with replacement.
(b) Sampling without replacement.
† (3) An urn contains two black balls and three white balls. Two balls are selected at
random from the urn without replacement, and the sequence of colors is noted.
(a) Find the probability that both balls are black.
(b) Find the probability of the event that the second ball is white.
(4) How many distinct solutions does the following equation have
x1 + x2 + x3 + x4 = 100
if
(a) x1 ∈ {1, 2, . . . , 100}, x2 ∈ {2, 3, . . . , 100}, x3 , x4 ∈ {0, 1, . . . , 100}?
†
(b) x1 ∈ {0, 1, . . . , 10} and x2 , x3 , x4 ∈ {0, 1, 2, . . .}?
(5) A multiple-choice test has 10 questions with 4 choices each.
(a) How many ways are there to answer the test?
(b) What is the probability that two papers have the same answers?
† (6) There are 20 black cell phones and 30 white cell phones in a store. An employee takes
10 phones at random. Find the probability that
(a) there will be exactly 4 black cell phones among the chosen phones;
(b) there will be less than 3 black cell phones among the chosen phones.
(7) A biased coin is tossed repeatedly until heads has come up three times. Find the
probability that k tosses are required.
(8) A student needs eight chips of a certain type to build a circuit. It is known that 5%
of these chips are defective. How many chips should he buy for there to be a greater
than 90% probability of having enough chips for the circuit?
† (9) I have 10 red and 10 blue cards. I shuffle the cards and then label them based on their
order: I write the number one on the first card, the number two on the second card,
and so on. What is the probability that
1
(a) All red cards are assigned numbers less than or equal to 15?
(b) Exactly 8 red cards are assigned numbers less than or equal to 15?
(10) A system is composed of four components, each of which is either working or failed.
Consider an experiment that consists of observing the status of each component, and
let the outcome of the experiment be given by the vector (x1 , x2 , x3 , x4 ) where xi is
equal to 1 if component i is working and is equal to 0 if component i has failed.
(a) Write the sample space and determine how many outcomes are in the sample
space of this experiment.
(b) Suppose that the system will work if components 1 and 2 are both working, or
if components 3 and 4 are both working. Specify all outcomes in the event that
the system works.
(c) Let E be the event that components 1 and 3 are both failed. How many outcomes
are contained in event E?
† (11) A box contains three marbles: one red, one green, and one blue. Consider an
experiment that consists of taking one marble from the box, then replacing it in the
box and drawing a second marble from the box. What is the sample space? If, at all
times, each marble in the box is equally likely to be selected, what is the probability
of each point in the sample space?
(12) A random experiment has sample space S = {a, b, c, d}. Suppose that P({a, b}) =
3/8, P({b, c}) = 6/8, P({d}) = 1/8.
(a) Use the axioms of probability to find the probabilities of the elementary events.
(b) Find P({c, d}).
† (13) A number x is selected at random in the interval [−1, 2]. Let the events A = {x < 0},
B = {|x − 0.5| < 0.5}, and C = {x > 0.75}.
(a) Find the probabilities of A, B, A ∩ B, and A ∩ C.
(b) Find the probabilities of A∪B, A∪C, and A∪B ∪C, first, by directly evaluating
the sets and then their probabilities, and second, by using the appropriate axioms
or corollaries.
† (14) Consider an experiment for which the sample space is the real line. A probability
law assigns probabilities to subsets of the form (−∞, r].
(a) Show that we must have P[(−∞, r]] ≤ P[(−∞, s]] when r < s.
(b) Find an expression for P[(r, s]] in terms of P[(−∞, r]] and P[(−∞, s]].
(c) Find an expression for P[(s, ∞)].
(15) Two numbers (x, y) are selected at random from the interval [0, 1].
(a) Find the probability that the pair of numbers is inside the unit circle.
(b) Find the probability that y > 2x.
† (16) Suppose each of the three players tosses a coin. If the outcome of one of the tosses
differs from the other outcomes, then the game ends. If not, then the players start
over and retoss their coins. Assuming fair coins, what is the probability that the
Page 2
game will end with the first round of tosses? If all three coins are biased and have a
probability 14 of landing heads, what is the probability that the game will end at the
first round?
(17) A bin contains 5 defective transistors (that immediately fail when put in use), 10
partially defective transistors (that fail after a couple of hours of use), and 25 accept-
able transistors. A transistor is chosen at random from the bin and put into use. If
it does not immediately fail, what is the probability that it is acceptable?
(18) A computer manufacturer uses chips from three sources. Chips from sources A, B,
and C are defective, with probabilities of 0.005, 0.001, and 0.010, respectively. If a
randomly selected chip is found to be defective, find the probability that the manu-
facturer was A; that the manufacturer was C. Assume that the proportions of chips
from A, B, and C are 0.5, 0.1, and 0.4, respectively.
† (19) One way to design a spam filter is to look at the words in an email. In particular,
some words are more frequent in spam emails. Suppose that we have the following
information:
• 50% of emails are spam;
• 1% of spam emails contain the word “refinance”;
• 0.001% of non-spam emails contain the word “refinance”.
Suppose that an email is checked and found to contain the word “refinance”. What
is the probability that the email is spam?
(20) Assume that there are k people in a room and we know that: (i) k = 5 with
probability 1/4; (ii) k = 10 with probability 1/4; (iii) k = 15 with probability 1/2.
(a) What is the probability that at least two of them have been born in the same
month? Assume that all months are equally likely.
(b) Given that we already know there are at least two people who celebrate their
birthday in the same month, what is the probability that k = 10?
Page 3
