Ok so my Stats professor never explains how to do this stuff

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27 Feb 2012, 6:38 am

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1. A state lottery involves the random selection of six different numbers between 1 and 27. If you select one six number combination, what is the probability that it will be the winning combination?


The question is really asking: how many six-number combinations are there? (Order doesn't matter, and a number cannot appear twice.) Well, then we're asking: how many six-element subsets are there of a 27-element set? We've seen this type of question before.

The answer is: there are
27 choose 6 = (27!) / (6! * 21!) = 296010.

Well, then any one of these combinations has a probability of 1 / 296010 = 3.3782... * 10^(-6).

Note: I actually don't know anything about lotteries, so I'm just assuming that the order of the numbers doesn't matter. If the order matters, then the answer is different.



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27 Feb 2012, 6:42 am

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2. A musician plans to perform 6 selections. In how many ways can she arrange the musical selections?


What we are asking here is: how many ways can you put 6 objects in order? The answer is 6! = 720.

This is a special case of a more general principle. The general rule is: if you want to know how many ways you can put n objects in order, the answer is always (n!).



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27 Feb 2012, 6:44 am

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3. A class has 8 students who are to be assigned seating by lot. What is the probability that the students will be arranged in order from shortest to tallest? (Assume that no two students are the same height.)


Well, how many ways can we arrange 8 objects into an order? It's the same situation as the last question, and the answer is 8! = 40320.

So the probability that a particular one of these orders happens is 1 / 40320 = 2.4801... * 10^(-5).



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27 Feb 2012, 6:45 am

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3. The table below shows the soft drinks preferences of people in three age groups

under 21 years of age = 40 for Cola, 25 for root beer and 20 for lemon-lime
between 21 and 40 = 35 for cola, 25 for root beer and 30 for lemon-lime
over 40 years of age = 20 for cola, 30 for root beer and 35 for lemon-lime

If one of the 255 subjects is randomely selected, find the probability that the person is over 40 years of age ?????? that they drink root beer.


I can't answer this question unless I know whether "and" or "or" fits in the gap.



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27 Feb 2012, 6:59 am

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Evaluate the expression 10P3


Let's recap. We know that the number of r-element subsets of an n-element set is always
n choose r = (n!) / (r! * (n-r)!)

Well, we can also write nCr instead of "n choose r". It's just a matter of notation.

Here's a new definition:
nPr = (n!) / ( (n - r)! )

It's not so easy to describe what nPr measures without using technical words. Here's an attempt:

If you have an n-element set named S, then nPr tells you the number of orderings of r elements of S, where an element cannot appear twice in an ordering.

But we don't need to know what nPr "means" in order to do this question. We just need to use the definition. By the definition:

10P3 = (10!) / (7!) = 720.



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27 Feb 2012, 11:35 pm

Thanks again for taking the time to go over this with me. I know a lot more know than I did before. =)



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