Worked solution
Derive a cookie success rate and compare two minimum-packet methods
Temasek Bakery produces a large number of “lucky” cookies during the festive season. of these cookies contains a winning slip. The cookies are sold by packets. Each packet consists of 8 randomly chosen cookies and the mean number of cookies with a winning slip per packet is 3.2.
(i) Find the probability that a randomly chosen packet contains at most 4 cookies with a winning slip. marks
(ii) Anand buys 12 packets of cookies. Find the probability that there are more than 10 packets that contain at most 4 cookies with a winning slip. marks
(iii) Beng decides to buy packets of cookies. Find the least value of such that the probability that there is at least one packet that contain exactly 4 cookies with a winning slip is more than 0.90. marks
[2017/TJC/MYE/II/5]
CJC · Review Problems · Question 10
Answer
. (i) ; (ii) ; (iii) least .
(i)
Let . The mean condition gives , so . Then , giving (3 s.f.).
(ii)
Let count packets with at most four winning slips. More than ten packets means . Then (3 s.f.). The source intermediate approximation is .3569729193; the final rounded answer agrees.
(iii) Method 1: logarithms
Here the packet event changes to exactly four slips: . For , require , equivalently . Hence , giving least .
(iii) Method 2: source probability table
The source checks the zero-success probability directly:
| Comparison | ||
|---|---|---|
| 8 | 0.12072282 | |
| 9 | 0.092685766 | |
| 10 | 0.0711601 |
The zero-success probability decreases as n increases. Eight fails and nine passes, so the least n is 9, agreeing with the logarithmic method.
Common mistakes
Do not reuse the cumulative packet probability .8263296 for the exactly-four event .2322432.