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More probability, actuarial problems Tuesday 2/16



Ok, I am asking you to really try in this class. I am not expecting you to pick everything up easily, and when you get stuck and need to ask questions, that's not a problem. It's expected.

The following two questions are from beanactuary.com (that's Be An Actuary dot com, not Bean Actuary .com. I think):

1. An urn contains 10 balls: 4 red and 6 blue. A second urn contains 16 red balls and an unknown number of blue balls. A single ball is drawn from each urn. The probability that both balls are the same color is 0.44.

Calculate the number of blue balls in the second urn.

Hint: using the words "and" and "or", what does it mean to say that "the probability that both balls are the same color is 0.44." Also, you have to use a little bit of algebra.

2. An insurer offers a health plan to the employees of a large company. As part of this plan, the individual employees may choose exactly two of the supplementary coverages A, B, and C, or they may choose no supplementary coverage. The proportions of the company's employees that choose coverages A, B, and C are 1⁄4 , 1⁄3 and 5⁄12 respectively.

Determine the probability that a randomly chosen employee will choose no supplementary coverage.

a. 0
b. 47⁄144
c. 1⁄2
d. 97⁄144
e. 7⁄9

Comments

Quantum Dranger said…
1) The answer is 4

2) The answer is 0%

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