Math 362 Fall 2009

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Frequencies of letters and diagrams in English

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Solutions to selected homework problems

Homework

Assignment 0 - due September 9, 2009

Assignment 1 (due Wednesday, September 23)

Please pay special attention to describing the sample spaces involved. For problems 3 and 5, they should be expressed in terms of sets, subsets, tuples, functions, etc. For Problem 8, you should use the tree approach. Purely numerical answers without clear connection with the sample spaces introduced will not count as full credit.

A note on credit for homework assignments

Credit for this assigment will be that of a regular assignment. You should assume that there will be approximately 10 homework assignments, but the exact number may be slightly different. All assignments count evenly towards the final grade, unless explicitly specified. The first quiz counts as a regular homework assignment.

Assignment 2 (due Friday, October 2)

Assignment 3 (due Friday, October 9)

Use R to solve the following problem:

You have 5 pennies and you play a game against an opponent who has an ulimited amount of money. You toss one of the pennies and if it lands heads up, the opponent gives you 2 pennies. If it lands tails up, you give him a penny. The game ends if you go broke, i.e. have no money. What is the probability that you will lose? How would the probability change if you had more money, for instance, 10, 20, 30, 40, 100 pennies?

Hint

You may use the following R functions: Also, you need to know how to build sequences using ":" and construct "for" loops.

Turn-in Instructions

The primary part of the solution should be an R program that prints the answer to the problem (a single number, the probability). The program should reside in a file with extension .R or .r. When studying a variable amount of money, please do not copy or cut-and-paste your programs. Instead, use functions to implement common functionality. For instance, a function

prob(money=5)
could be used to print the answer for variable amount of pennies. When called with no parameter:
prob()
it will then print the probability for 5 pennies.

Please do not put your program in a Word document. It should be a plain text file, that can be understood by a plain text editor, such as Notepad.

Please supply a write-up summarizing your conclusions and observations. It can be a part of the script, included as comments, or it can be a separate document. The document should be either a plain text document (see above) or a Word document, or a PDF document.

Once you have prepared your files, please create a Zip archive containing all files and suitable to be e-mailed as an attachment.

Finally, before the due date (9am on Friday, October 9), please submit the Zip archive by e-mail as an attachment. It is paramount that you use this specific line as the subject line:

math362_homework_3_submission

Special Assignment (due Monday, October 12 before class)

Carefully write up a solution to problem 2.47 of Homework 2.

Credit

The credit for this assignment is 5, which will be added to the result of Homework 2, up to a maximum of 35 points.

Assignment 4 (due Friday, October 16)

Chapter 2, Supplementary Exercises: 2.54, 2.55, 2.68, 2.69, 2.70, 2.73, 2.77.

Section 3.1: 3.1, 3.7.

Plotting c.d.f. with R

Plot the c.d.f of the number of runs in a sequence of two kinds of items (say good and defective) for m=20 good and n=30 defective items.

Important: Please submit the program and the plot as hardcopy with the rest of your assignment.

Assignment 5 (due Wednesday, October 21)

Section 3.2: 3.11, 3.12, 3.18, 3.21.

Assignment 6 (due Friday, October 30)

Computing the binomial distribution with R

Many of the problems involve labor-intensive calculations. You should perform the calculations of the binomial distribution with R, as to avoid wasting time on simple arithmetic. You will find the necessary information in lecture notes. The important R functions are:

Important instructions

Please submit the hardcopy of the scripts you are using, or the printouts of the R sessions. However, your solutions should make sense without the R portions. Thus, explain all sums you are calculating, with proper summation limits. Copy the summation results from R into your homework and clearly state that you obtained them with R and point to the relevant portions of your R code.

Assignment 7 (due Friday, November 6)

Additional instructions

The same instructions apply as those of assignment 6, in regard to using R and hardcopy, except for different distributions. Please look up in the manual the following commands pertinent to specific distributions:

Please note that the R functions are ogranized into quartets, each quartet responsible for the four basic functions:

Assignment 8 (due Monday, November 16)

Additional instructions

As for assignment 7.

A note on R and the uniform distribution

The quartet of R functions supporting uniform distribution is: dunif, punif, qunif and runif.

Assignment 9 (due Friday, November 20)

Additional instructions

As for assignment 8.

Assignment 10 (due ???)

Additional instructions

As for assignment 9.