Distributions - Some Questions
Probability distributions describe the possible outcomes of experiments.
They are in some kind a universal description of the underlying random
processes. In order to give a first impression, consider the questions
below. The answers to the questions could be found easily if we knew the
probability distributions of the involved processes.
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We flip a coin fifty times. How often will the head
be up?
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We flip a coin again and again: When will the head
be up the first time?
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We flip 20 coins at once for thirty times. Tell me
more about the number of heads expected to be seen.
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Delta Motors Inc. produced 100,000 cars. 20,000 cars
from this series are already sold to car-drivers, 80,000 cars are still
at car dealers. Now technicians detect a mistake in construction. According
to their calculation, 3% of the cars of this series will cause troubles
during usage. The supervisory board of the company wants to know the probability
of more than 1,000 cars showing this defect.
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A physicist baked a cake, mixing exactly 75 raisins
into the dough. The cake is then cut into 8 equal pieces. Picking one piece,
he counts 15 raisins in this piece of cake. Being very astonished about
this fact (he expected 9 or 10 raisins), he wants to know the probability
of finding 15 raisins in this piece.
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The FBSPD (Federal Bureau of Statistics and Population
Dynamics) is interested in the distribution of the body-height of the population
(adults).
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Epsilon Insurance Inc. needs to calculate the risk
of a client dying before his 60th birthday.
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What is the intensity of light in the center and
at the border of a ground-glass screen?
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