Year: 1995
Paper: 2
Question Number: 13
Course: UFM Statistics
Section: Poisson Distribution
No solution available for this problem.
Difficulty Rating: 1600.0
Difficulty Comparisons: 0
Banger Rating: 1484.0
Banger Comparisons: 1
Fly By Night Airlines run jumbo jets which seat $N$ passengers. From
long experience they know that a very small proportion $\epsilon$
of their passengers fail to turn up. They decide to sell $N+k$ tickets
for each flight. If $k$ is very small compared with $N$ explain
why they might expect
\[
\mathrm{P}(r\mbox{ passengers fail to turn up})=\frac{\lambda^{r}}{r!}\mathrm{e}^{-\lambda}
\]
approximately, with $\lambda=N\epsilon.$ For the rest of the question
you may assume that the formula holds exactly.
Each ticket sold represents $\pounds A$ profit, but the airline must
pay each passenger that it cannot fly $\pounds B$ where $B>A>0.$
Explain why, if $r$ passengers fail to turn up, its profit, in pounds,
is
\[
A(N+k)-B\max(0,k-r),
\]
where $\max(0,k-r)$ is the larger of $0$ and $k-r.$ Write down
the expected profit $u_{k}$ when $k=0,1,2$ and $3.$ Find $v_{k}=u_{k+1}-u_{k}$
for general $k$ and show that $v_{k}>v_{k+1}.$ Show also that
\[
v_{k}\rightarrow A-B
\]
as $k\rightarrow\infty.$
Advise Fly By Night on how to choose $k$ to maximise its expected
profit $u_{k}.$