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Binomial ProbabilitiesPETITION

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41 views4 pages

Binomial ProbabilitiesPETITION

answer

Uploaded by

John Lloyd Ruar Almoite
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Binomial Probabilities

In this lab, we will explore how to use formulas in Excel to calculate probabilities involving combinations
like the “coin-toss” experiments modeled by the Binomial Distribution.

1. How many ways can we select two different letters from the set, {A, B, C, D, E}? List them.

2. What if we selected two from the first 10 letters in the alphabet, {A, …, J}? Do you think that the
number of ways would be much larger? Would it be double or more than double?

It turns out that the number of possibilities practically quadruples when the set of choices doubles. This
is an example of the “Combination function”, where COMBIN(10,2) gives the number of ways to get a
combination of 2 elements from a set of size 10.

The formula for COMBIN(n,k) is n! / k! / (n-k)! where n! is called “n factorial” which is equal to:

n! = (n) (n-1) (n-2) (n-3) …(3) (2) (1)

Use the COMBIN function to find the number of ways to select three different letters from the alphabet:

Using Excel to Calculate COMBIN(n, k)

A. Open a new Excel spreadsheet file. Save it as “YourName_Bin.xlsx.

B. Move the cursor to cell B1. Click the Formulas icon.

C. Select the COMBIN function.


D. Type 10 in the number box.

E. Type 3 in the number chosen box and hit enter, (or type “=COMBIN(10,3)” into the cell B1)

Use your spreadsheet to answer the following questions:

3. How many different ways can a city health department inspector visit 5 restaurants in a
neighborhood with 10 restaurants?

4. How many ID cards can be made if there are 6 digits on a card and no digit can be used more than
once?

5. How many different ways can 4 tickets be selected from 50 tickets if each ticket wins a different
prize?

Now that we know how to use the COMBIN() function to answer questions on how many ways an event
can occur, we can calculate probabilities. Recall that in a “Binomial” experiment, where we want to
calculate the probability of getting x successes from n repeated independent trials, we use the formula:

Prob(x) = COMBIN(n,x) px (1-p)n-x

where p represents the probability of success in one trial.

(The term “coin flip” model is used when the experiment involves flipping an unfair coin n times, where
the probability of the coin showing heads is p. We are interested in the probability of showing heads in k
out of the n flips. Notice that p is the probability on 1 head when n=1).
6. Use Excel to calculate the probability of 3 successes in 10 trials, where p = 0.5

Excel can help us calculate this complicated formula by using the function: BINOMDIST ( )

7. Suppose the president has a 60% approval rating among voters. Twelve voters are randomly
selected and asked if they approve of the president. The population is so large that, while sampling
is not done with replacement, this does little to affect the independence of the trials. We want to
know the probability that seven of the 12 voters approve of the president.

To find the probability follow the steps in your spreadsheet:

A. In cell A5 type “P =” and in cell B5 type 0.6 (the probability of success).

B. In cell A6 type “N =” and in cell B6 type 12 (the number of trials).

C. In cell A8 type “X =” and in cell B8 type 7 (the number we are interested in).

D. In cell A10 type “Prob(X=7)” and in Cell B10 type “=BINOM.DIST(“

E. Input the values that the formula requires (“parameters”) as follow:

Set number_s to “B8”, set trials to “B6”, set Probability_s to “B5”, and set Cumulative to 0.

F. Type “)” and hit enter. The value of the probability will appear in the cell.

What if we wanted to know the probability that at most 5 of the voters approve of the president?

Using the same spreadsheet, we want to calculate P(X<=5)

A. In cell A11 type “P(X<=5)” and in Cell B11 type “=BINOM.DIST(“


B. Input the values that the formula requires as follow:

Set number_s to “B8”, set trials to “B6”, set Probability_s to “B5”, and set Cumulative to 1.

C. Type “)” and hit enter. The value of the cumulative probability will appear in the cell.

In the next example, we will find out how to calculate the probability that at least 8 of the voters will
approve of the president. In other words, we want to find P(X>=8). To find the probability we will need
to find the complement probability of P(X<8) = P(X<=7).

A. In cell A12 type “P(X>=8)” and in Cell B12 type “=1- BINOM.DIST(“

B. Input the values that the formula requires as follows:

Set number_s to “B8”, set trials to “B6”, set Probability_s to “B5”, and set Cumulative to 1.

C. Type “)” and hit enter. The value of the probability will appear in the cell.

Save your excel file for future use. Do not close it yet.

The Binomial Distribution

Open the excel file named, “BinDistrib”. You can see the probability distribution for n<=25 and 0<=p<=1.

8. Set p to 0.6 and n to 12. Use the table and the graph to check the answers in your spreadsheet.

ANSWER:

3. there are 252 different ways for a city health department inspector to visit 5 restaurants out of a total
of 10

4. total number of unique ID cards that can be made is 151200

5. number of different ways to select four tickets from fifty is 231130.

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