Year: 1995
Paper: 1
Question Number: 13
Course: UFM Statistics
Section: Poisson Distribution
No solution available for this problem.
Difficulty Rating: 1500.0
Difficulty Comparisons: 0
Banger Rating: 1484.0
Banger Comparisons: 1
A scientist is checking a sequence of microscope slides for cancerous
cells, marking each cancerous cell that she detects with a red dye.
The number of cancerous cells on a slide is random and has a Poisson
distribution with mean $\mu.$ The probability that the scientist
spots any one cancerous cell is $p$, and is independent of the probability
that she spots any other one.
\begin{questionparts}
\item Show that the number of cancerous cells which she marks on a single
slide has a Poisson distribution of mean $p\mu.$
\item Show that the probability $Q$ that the second cancerous cell which
she marks is on the $k$th slide is given by
\[
Q=\mathrm{e}^{-\mu p(k-1)}\left\{ (1+k\mu p)(1-\mathrm{e}^{-\mu p})-\mu p\right\} .
\]
\end{questionparts}