NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, ANDHRA PRADESH

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering

EC-252: Probability Theory and Stochastic Processes (IInd Semester 2024-25)
Homework 1 (Introduction to Probability)

Instructor: Dr. V. Prakash Singh Email: vpspeaks@gmail.com

1. Sample Space : A conventional knock-out tournament begins with 16 players and has 4 rounds.
There are no play-offs for the positions 2, 3, . .. ,15, and the initial table of draws is specified.
Determine the sample space. Find the cardinality of the sample space and state whether it is
finite, countably infinite or uncountable.

2. Events and Probabilities : Prove the following

(a) Probability that exactly one of the event A and B occurs is P (A) + P (B) − 2P (A ∪ B)

(b) P (A ∪ B ∪ C) = 1 − P (Ac |B c ∩ C c )P (B c |C c )P (C c )

(c) If A is independent of itself, P (A) = 0 or 1

(d) If A and B are independent then A and B c are independent, Ac and B are independent
and Ac and B c are independent.
 
T∞
(e) Let Ai , i ≥ 1, be events such that P (Ai ) = 1 for all i. Show that P i=1 Ai =1

3. Events and Probabilities : A pair of dice is tossed and the two numbers appearing on the top
are recorded. Determine the sample space and chose a uniform discrete probability law. Find
the probability of each of the following events.

(a) A = {two numbers are equal}

(b) B = {sum is 10 or more}

(c) C = {5 appears on first die}

(d) D = {5 appears on at least one die}

(e) E = {max of two numbers is 4}

 4. Events and Probabilities A fair coin is tossed independently four times. What is the probability
of the event that the number of time heads shown up is more than the number of times tail
shown up ?

5. Events and Probabilities : An EC252 class contains 8 girls and 20 boys of which half the
boys and one fourth of the girls have backlogs. Find the probability that a student chosen at
random is a boy or has backlogs.

6. Events and Probabilities : A box contains m white balls and n black balls. Balls are drawn
at random one at a time without replacement. Find the probability of encountering a white
ball by the kth draw.

7. Events and Probabilities : Suppose you are throwing a dart on a circular board with radius 1.
We are interested in the coordinates of the landing point of the dart. Determine the sample
space. Chose the probability law as probability of any event is the area of the subset. Find
the probability of the event that the dart hits a point which is closer to the center of the circle
than to its circumference.

8. Events and Probabilities : In a housing society, half of the families have a single child per
family, while the remaining half have two children per family. Find the probability that a
child picked at random, has a sibling.

9. Events and Probabilities : A biased coin has a 0.7 probability of landing heads and a 0.3
probability of landing tails. Suppose you toss the coin 9 times. Which of the two events below
has more probability.

(a) 3 heads and 6 tails.

(b) All 9 heads

10. Conditional Probability : A pair of fair dice is thrown. Find the probability that the sum is
9 or greater if: (a) 5 appears on the first die (b) 5 appears on at least one die.

11. Conditional Probability : A bag of balls contains 6 red balls and 10 blue balls. Suppose you
draw three balls out of the bag (without replacement), and they were all the same color. What
is the probability that all 3 marbles were red?
12. Conditional Probability : There are n urns of which the rth urn contains r - 1 red balls and n
- r blue balls. You pick an urn at random and draw two balls at random without replacement.
Find the probability that

(a) the second ball is blue;

(b) the second ball is blue, given that the first ball is blue.

13. Conditional Probability : A man possesses five coins, two of which are double-headed, one is
double-tailed, and two are normal. Answer the following questions.

(a) He shuts his eyes, picks a coin at random, and tosses it. What is the probability that
the lower (hidden) face of the coin is a head?
(b) He opens his eyes and sees that the coin is showing heads; what is the probability that
the lower face is a head?
(c) He shuts his eyes again, and tosses the coin again. What is the probability that the lower
face is a head?
(d) He opens his eyes and sees that the coin is showing heads; what is the probability that
the lower face is a head?
(e) He discards this coin, picks another at random, and tosses it. What is the probability
that it shows heads?

14. Conditional Probability : An unbiased coin is tossed three times. Determine the conditional
probability that all tosses give head, given that

(a) the first two tosses were heads

(b) the first and last tosses were heads
(c) at least one toss was a head
(d) at least two tosses were heads
(e) all three tosses were heads

15. Conditional Probability : In an EC252 class, the students can speak in only Hindi and Tel-
ugu languages. Assume that the probability that someone speaks in Telugu only is 0.7, the
probability that someone speaks in Hindi only is 0.3 and the probability that someone speaks
both in Telugu and Hindi is 0.2. Find
 (a) the conditional probability that someone speaks in Telugu if it is known that he does
not speak in Hindi.

(b) the conditional probability that someone speaks in Hindi if it is known that he does not
speak in Telugu.

(c) the conditional probability that someone speaks in Telugu if it is known that he speaks
in Hindi.

16. Conditional Probability : In a class, there are equal number of boy students and girl students.
75% of the students study Science and the remaining 25% students study Commerce. Com-
merce students are two times more likely to be a boy than are Science students. Find the
probability that a randomly selected girl student studies Commerce.

17. Multiplication Rule: A class has 20 boys and 8 girls. A project team consisting of 3 students
is selected at random from the class. Find the probability that a) they are all boys b) they
all are girls.

18. Multiplication Rule: EC252 course has two exams, Midsem and Endsem. The probability of
failing in Midsem is 0.2 and that in Endsem is 0.4. Given that a student has failed in midsem,
the probability of failing in endsem is 0.75. Find the probability of a student failing in both
Midsem and Endsem.

19. Multiplication Rule: A company has visited NIT Andhra Pradesh for recruitment and has
two round of interviews namely technical and HR. The probability that a resume is shortlisted
for technical interview is 0.1. The probability of clearing technical round of interview is 0.2.
The probability of clearing HR round of interview is 0.3. A student from ECE branch submit
his resume for this job, what is the probability of her/him getting this job ?

20. Total Probability Rule: Suppose a biased coin with probability of head 0.6, is tossed. If heads
appears, then a number is selected at random from the numbers 1 through 10; if tails appears,
then a number is selected at random from the numbers 1 through 5. Find the probability that
an even number appears.

21. Total Probability Rule: Suppose box 1 contains a white balls and b black balls, and box 2
contains c white balls and d black balls. One ball of unknown color is transferred from the
 first box into the second one and then a ball is drawn from the latter. What is the probability
that it will be a white ball?

22. Total Probability Rule: A box contains x red balls and y blue balls. A ball is drawn from the
box randomly and then a second ball is drawn randomly (without replacement).

(a) Explain without computing, why the probability of the second ball being blue is the
same as the probability of the first ball being blue.

(b) Define the sample space of the problem, and use this to compute the probabilities for
part (a) and show that they are the equal.

(c) Suppose that there are 16 balls in total, and that the probability that the two balls
drawn are of the same color is the same as the probability that they are of different
colors. Determine a suitable value for x and y.

23. Bayes’ Rule : A binary classification model predicts whether an image contains a dog. It is
known that 60% of the images in the dataset contain a dog. The model predicts a ”Dog”
for 90% of the images with dogs (true positive rate). The model predicts a ”Dog” for 20%
of the images without dogs (false positive rate). If the model predicts a ”Dog”, what is the
probability the image actually contains a dog ?

24. Bayes’ Rule : An email filter classifies emails as spam or not spam. It is known that 30% of
all emails are spam. If an email is spam, the filter detects it as spam 95% of the time. If an
email is not spam, the filter incorrectly detects it as spam 10% of the time. If an email is
detected as spam by the filter, what is the probability that it is actually spam ?

25. Bayes’ Rule : The Alzheimer disease affects 1 in 1,000 people on the planet. A diagnostic test
for the disease has the following properties: If a person has the disease, the test is positive
99% of the time (true positive rate). If a person does not have the disease, the test is positive
5% of the time (false positive rate). If a person tests positive, what is the probability they
actually have the disease?

26. Bayes’ Rule : There are three sections in EC252 course, with section A having 50 students,
section B having 40 students, section C (Repeaters) having 20 students. It is given that the
probability of getting an A grade in section A is 0.2, the probability of getting an A grade in
 section B is 0.3 and the probability of getting an A grade in section C is 0.02. If an student
got an A grade, determine

(a) the probability that the student was in section A ?

(b) the probability that the student was in section B ?

(c) the probability that the student was in section C ?

27. Bayes’ Rule : A factory production line is manufacturing a product using four machines P,
Q, R and S. The machines P, Q, R and S are responsible for 20%, 30%, 40% and 10% of the
total output respectively. It is known that the 5% of the output from machine P is defective,
4% of the output from machine Q is defective, 3% of the output from machine Q is defective
and 2% of the output from machine S is defective. A product is chosen at random from the
factory and found to be defective. Determine

(a) the probability that the product was from machine P ?

(b) the probability that the product was from machine Q ?

(c) the probability that the product was from machine R ?

(c) the probability that the product was from machine S ?

28. Bayes’ Rule : In a market, apples are sold in boxes which have 10 apples. There is a 60%
chance that all apples in a box are OK, 30% chance that exactly one apple is rotten and 10%
chance that exactly two apples are rotten. You bought a box of apples from the market and
checked first apple. If the apple is rotten, what is the probability that one more apple is rotten
in this box.

29. Bayes’ Rule : Consider a communication system consist of a transmitter and receiver as shown
in Fig. 1. The transmitter transmits three symbols x0 , x1 and x2 . The receiver receives three
symbols y0 , y1 and y2 . The transition probabilities of the channel is shown in the fig. The prior
probabilities of the three transmit symbols P (xi ) are 0.5, 0.3 and 0.2 respectively. Determine

(a) the received symbol probabilities P (y0 ), P (y1 ) and P (y2 )

(b) the posterior probabilities of this system P (xi |yi ) for i=1,2,3 ?

(c) repeat part (a) if every transmit symbol is equally likely P (xi ) = 1/3 ?
 Figure 1: Figure for Problem 29

(c) repeat part (a) if every transmit symbol is equally likely ?

30. Independence : In a group of 20 people, (a) what is the probability that two or more persons
will have the same birthday (month and date)? (b) What is the probability that someone in
that group will have birthday that matches yours?

31. Independence : Three switches connected in parallel operate independently. Each switch
remains closed with probability p. (a) Find the probability of receiving an input signal at the
output. (b) Find the probability that switch S1 is open given that an input signal is received
at the output.

32. Independence : Consider a communication system with six repeaters A, B, C, D, E and F

between the input X and Y as shown in Fig. 2. Repeaters A, C and D has the probability
of failing 0.005 and repeaters B, E and F has the probability of failing 0.008. All repeaters
fail independent of each other. What is the probability that an input signal is received at the
output.

33. Independence : Consider a communication system with six repeaters A, B, C, D, E and F

between the input X and Y as shown in Fig. 3. Repeaters A, C and E has the probability
of failing 0.005 and repeaters B, D and F has the probability of failing 0.008. All repeaters
fail independent of each other. What is the probability that an input signal is received at the
output.

34. Independence : We roll a die n times . Let Aij be the event that the i th and jth rolls produce
 Figure 2: Figure for Problem 32

Figure 3: Figure for Problem 33

the same number. Show that the events {Aij : 1 ≤ i < j ≤ n} are pairwise independent but
not independent.

35. Independence : Show that the conditional independence of events A and B given C neither
implies , nor is implied by, the independence of A and B. For which events C is it the case
that, for all A and B, the events A and B are independent if and only if they are conditionally
independent given C ?

36. Independence : Aman has three children, each of which is equally likely to be a boy or a girl
independently of the others . Consider the following three events A = all the children are of
the same gender , B = there is at most one boy and C = the family includes a boy and a girl.
Answer the following.
 (a) Show that A is independent of B, and that B is independent of C.

(b) Is A independent of C ?

(c) Do these results hold if boys and girls are not equally likely?

(d) Do these results hold if Aman has four children ?

37. Independence : Aman, Binod, Charan , and Dev were all friends at school. Subsequently each
of the 6 pairs of friends meet up; at each of the six meetings the pair involved in fight with
some fixed probability p, or become firm friends with probability 1 − p. Fights take place
independently of each other. In future, if any of the four hears a rumor, then he tells it to his
firm friends only. If Aman hears a rumor, what is the probability that:

(a) Dev hears it ?

(b) Dev hears it if Aman and Binod have fought ?

(c) Dev hears it if Binod and Charan have fought ?

(d) Dev hears it if Dev and Anne have fought ?

38. Repeated Trials An unbiased coin is tossed an infinite number of times. What is the probability
that the fourth head appears at the tenth toss.

39. Repeated Trials A biased coin is tossed till a head appears for the first time, What is the
probability that the number of required tosses is odd?

40. Repeated Trials A fair coin is thrown repeatedly. What is the probability that on the nth
throw (Assume n is even)

(a) a head appears for the firs t time?

(b) exactly two heads have appeared altogether till now ?

(c) the numbers of heads and tails till now are equal ?

(d) at leas two heads have appeared till now?

41. Repeated Trials In a Test series, two teams (call them India and Australia) play a sequence
of test matches against each other, and the first team to win four matches wins the series.
Let p be the probability that India wins an individual match, and assume that the matches
are independent. What is the probability that team India wins the series?