Academic Integrity: tutoring, explanations, and feedback — we don’t complete graded work or submit on a student’s behalf.

Laura is feeling lucky and decides to drive down to the Plainville casino to pla

ID: 3023424 • Letter: L

Question

Laura is feeling lucky and decides to drive down to the Plainville casino to play the slot machines. She finds a machine that requires $1 tokens to play, and pays out $40 on every jackpot. Of course, this machine is well-designed by electrical engineers so that the probability of a jackpot is 0.02 on every spin, and the outcomes of the spins are independent. Laura has brought a very large stash of tokens, so she has decided to play until she wins once, and then walk away. Let X be a discrete random variable denoting the number of times she plays the machine. What type of random variable is X How many times will Laura play the machine, on average What is the probability Laura will play more than 4 games Assuming Laura wins on the X-th play. Then, she will have spent $X dollars, and collected $40, so the net winnings are W = 40 - X. Calculate the expected winnings E[W]. Calculate the variance of the expected winnings Var[W].

Explanation / Answer

a) Her the random variable is the number of trials to get a success. This is follows geometric distribution.

b) Number of times Laura play the maching on an average = 1/p = 1/0.02 = 50

c) Probability function of geometric distribution = p*q^(k-1) where k=1,2,...

Probability laura play more than 4 games = P(x>4) = 1-P(x<=4) = 1-[0.02+0.0196+0.019208+0.018824]=0.922368

d)EW) = 40-E(X) = 40-50= -10

e)Var(W) = Var(40-X) = Var(X) = 0.98/(0.02)^2 (since Var(X) = q/p^2

Var (W) = 2450