Year: 2000
Paper: 3
Question Number: 12
Course: UFM Statistics
Section: Poisson Distribution
No solution available for this problem.
Difficulty Rating: 1700.0
Difficulty Comparisons: 0
Banger Rating: 1553.7
Banger Comparisons: 8
In a lottery, any one of $N$ numbers, where $N$ is large,
is chosen at random and independently for each player by
machine. Each week there are $2N$ players
and one winning number is drawn. Write down an
exact expression for the probability that there are
three or fewer winners in a week, given that you hold
a winning ticket that week. Using the fact that
$$
{\biggl( 1 - {a \over n} \biggr) ^n \approx \e^{-a}}$$
for $n$ much larger than $a$, or otherwise, show that this probability
is approximately ${2 \over 3}$ .
Discuss briefly whether
this probability would increase or decrease
if the numbers were chosen by the players.
Show that the expected number of winners in a week,
given that you hold a winning ticket that week, is
$ 3-N^{-1}$.