Let y denote the number of broken eggs in a randomly selected carton of one dozen eggs. Suppose that the probability distribution of y is as follows. y 0 1 2 3 4 p(y) 0.63 0.21 0.11 0.03 ? (a) Only y values of 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 have positive probabilities. What is p(4)? (Hint: Consider the properties of a discrete probability distribution.) p(4) = (b) How would you interpret p(1) = 0.21? In the long run, the proportion that will have at most one broken egg will equal 0.21.In the long run, the proportion of cartons that have exactly one broken egg will equal 0.21. The probability of one randomly chosen carton having broken eggs in it is 0.21.The proportion of eggs that will be broken in each carton from this population is 0.21. (c) Calculate P(y ≤ 2), the probability that the carton contains at most two broken eggs. P(y ≤ 2) = Interpret this probability. The probability of two randomly chosen cartons having broken eggs in them is this probability.In the long run, the proportion that will have at most two broken eggs will equal this probability. In the long run, the proportion of cartons that have exactly two broken eggs will equal this probability.The proportion of eggs that will be broken in any two cartons from this population is this probability. (d) Calculate P(y < 2), the probability that the carton contains fewer than two broken eggs. P(y < 2) = Why is this smaller than the probability in part (c)? This probability is less than the probability in part (c) because in probability distributions, P(y ≤ k) is always greater than P(y < k).This probability is less than the probability in part (c) because the event y = 2 is now not included. This probability is less than the probability in part (c) because the proportion of eggs with any exact number of broken eggs is negligible.This probability is not less than the probability in part (c) because the two probabilities are the same for this distribution.
Continuous Probability Distributions
Probability distributions are of two types, which are continuous probability distributions and discrete probability distributions. A continuous probability distribution contains an infinite number of values. For example, if time is infinite: you could count from 0 to a trillion seconds, billion seconds, so on indefinitely. A discrete probability distribution consists of only a countable set of possible values.
Normal Distribution
Suppose we had to design a bathroom weighing scale, how would we decide what should be the range of the weighing machine? Would we take the highest recorded human weight in history and use that as the upper limit for our weighing scale? This may not be a great idea as the sensitivity of the scale would get reduced if the range is too large. At the same time, if we keep the upper limit too low, it may not be usable for a large percentage of the population!
y | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
p(y) | 0.63 | 0.21 | 0.11 | 0.03 | ? |
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