University of Illinois Summer 2017

ECE 313: Exam I

Thursday, July 6, 2017
5.15 - 6.30 p.m.
3015 ECEB

Name: (in BLOCK CAPITALS)

NetID:

Signature:

Instructions
This exam is printed double-sided, so make sure to look at all problems and both sides of every
sheet.
This exam is closed book and closed notes except that one 8.5”×11” sheet of notes is permitted:
both sides may be used. Calculators, laptop computers, PDAs, iPods, cellphones, e-mail pagers,
headphones, etc. are not allowed.
The exam consists of five problems worth a total of 100 points. The problems are not weighted
equally, so it is best for you to pace yourself accordingly. Write your answers in the spaces provided,
and reduce common fractions to lowest terms, but DO NOT convert them to decimal fractions (for
3 24
example, write instead of or 0.75).
4 32
SHOW YOUR WORK; BOX YOUR ANSWERS. Answers without appropriate justification will receive
very little credit. If you need extra space, use the blank page at the end of the exam.

Grading

1. 15 points

2. 18 points

3. 20 points

4. 21 points

5. 26 points

Total (100 points)

1. [15 points] (3 points per answer)
In order to discourage guessing, 3 points will be deducted for each incorrect answer (no
penalty or gain for blank answers). A net negative score will reduce your total exam score.
For each of the following statements, determine if it is true or false for any three events A, B
and C in a common probability space.
TRUE FALSE
  P (A|B) + P (A|B c ) = 1.

  P (A|B) + P (C|B) = 1.

  If A and B are mutually exclusive, then P (A ∪ C|B) = P (C|B).

Pn
  If E1 , . . . , En is a partition of Ω, then i=1 P (Ei |B) = 1.

Pn
  If E1 , . . . , En is a partition of Ω and P (B) < 1, then i=1 P (Ei |B) < 1.

1
2. [18 points] Dilbert and Wally are playing a game where Wally flips a coin and Dilbert wins
if Heads show, while Wally wins if tails show. The coin is biased with P {heads} = p, but
Dilbert does not know that. After five successive wins by Wally, Dilbert thinks that something
is not right, so he decides he should now flip the coin (instead of Wally). Let X be the number
of total coin flips (Wally’s plus Dilbert’s) until Dilbert wins.
(a) Obtain the pmf of X

(b) Obtain E[sin(πX)].

(c) Obtain E[3X 2 ].

2
3. [20 points] A job arriving in a certain cloud computing system must be routed to one of
eight servers. Due to the loads, the servers all have different rates. Routing the job to the
server with the highest rate would require sampling the rates of all eight servers. Instead, the
rates of three randomly selected distinct servers are sampled (all choices being equally likely)
and the job is routed to the sampled server with the highest service rate.
(a) Let A = {the job is assigned to the server with the highest service rate}. Find P (A).

(b) Let B = {the job is assigned to one of the four slowest servers}. Find P (B).

(c) Let C = {job is assigned to one of the two servers with the highest rates}. Find P (C).

3
4. [21 points] Consider a binary hypothesis testing problem where X is Geometric(1/2) under
hypothesis H1 and Geometric(2/3) under hypothesis H0 . It is known that π1 = 4/9.
(a) Derive the MAP rule to decide on the underlying hypothesis.

(b) Determines the probability of false alarm for the MAP rule.

(c) Determine the value(s) of π1 for which H1 would always be chosen.

4
5. [26 points] Alice and Dilbert play the following game of dice. Each round of the game
consists of Alice rolling one die and Dilbert rolling two dice. All the dice are fair. Here are
the rules of this game:
• If Alice’s number falls strictly between the two numbers rolled by Dilbert, then Alice
wins and the game ends, e.g. if Alice rolls a 3 and Dilbert rolls a 1 and a 4.
• If Alice’s number is equal to one of the numbers rolled by Dilbert, then it is a tie and
the round is repeated until there is a winner, e.g if Alice rolls a 3 and Dilbert rolls a 1
and a 3.
• In all other cases, Dilbert wins and the game ends, e.g if Alice rolls a 3 and Dilbert rolls
a 1 and a 2.
Based on these rules, obtain:
(a) P {Alice wins on the first round given that she rolls a 3}.

(b) P {Alice wins on the first round}.

5
(c) P {There is a tie on the first round}.

(d) P {Dilbert wins on the first round.}

(e) P {Alice wins the game}.

6
.