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Rude Drivers: Tailgating Do you tailgate the car in front of you? About \(35 \%\) of all drivers will tailgate before passing, thinking they can make the car in front of them go faster (Source: Bernice Kanner, Are You Normal?, St. Martin's Press). Suppose that you are driving a considerable distance on a two-lane highway and are passed by 12 vehicles. (a) Let \(r\) be the number of vehicles that tailgate before passing. Make a histogram showing the probability distribution of \(r\) for \(r=0\) through \(r=12\). (b) Compute the expected number of vehicles out of 12 that will tailgate. (c) Compute the standard deviation of this distribution.

Short Answer

Expert verified
(a) Draw a histogram for probabilities 0 to 12 using binomial distributions. (b) Expected tailgating vehicles is 4.2. (c) Standard deviation is approximately 1.67.

Step by step solution

01

Define the problem as a binomial distribution

The problem states that 35% of all drivers tailgate before passing. In statistics, this implies a binomial distribution where each vehicle has an independent probability of 0.35 to tailgate. We define our random variable \(r\) as the number of vehicles that tailgate out of 12, where \(n=12\) is the number of trials, and the probability of success \(p=0.35\).
02

Calculate probabilities for each possible value of r

To create the histogram, we need the probability of \(r\) vehicles tailgating. Use the binomial probability formula: \[ P(r) = \binom{12}{r} \times (0.35)^r \times (0.65)^{12-r} \] Calculate this for \(r = 0, 1, 2, \ldots, 12\). These probabilities will be plotted on the histogram.
03

Create the histogram

With probabilities calculated in the previous step, plot a histogram where the x-axis represents \(r\), the number of cars that tailgate, and the y-axis is the probability \(P(r)\). Each bar corresponds to one of the calculated probabilities from Step 2. The heights of the bars represent the likelihood of each \(r\) value occurring.
04

Compute the expected number of tailgaters

The expected value (or mean) for a binomial distribution can be calculated as \( E(r) = n \times p \), where \(n\) is the number of trials and \(p\) is the probability of success. Thus, the expected number of tailgating vehicles is \[ E(r) = 12 \times 0.35 = 4.2 \]
05

Calculate the standard deviation

The standard deviation \(\sigma\) of a binomial distribution is given by the formula: \[ \sigma = \sqrt{n \times p \times (1-p)} \] Plug in the values of \(n\) and \(p\) to find the standard deviation: \[ \sigma = \sqrt{12 \times 0.35 \times 0.65} \approx 1.67 \]

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Key Concepts

These are the key concepts you need to understand to accurately answer the question.

Histogram
A histogram is a graphical representation that organizes a group of data points into user-specified ranges. In this context, we use it to show the probability distribution of random variable \( r \), representing the number of vehicles that tailgate before passing.
When dealing with a binomial distribution, like in this problem where each car has a 35% probability of tailgating, a histogram can effectively visualize these probabilities. Here’s how you do it:
  • First, determine the number of trials (which is 12, the number of cars) and the probability of a car tailgating (\( p = 0.35 \)).
  • Use the binomial probability formula: \[ P(r) = \binom{12}{r} \times (0.35)^r \times (0.65)^{12-r} \]
  • Calculate this for each possible value of \( r \) (from 0 up to 12).
  • Plot these probabilities as bars on the histogram, with \( r \) on the x-axis and \( P(r) \) on the y-axis.
The resulting graph helps us easily see which outcomes (values of \( r \)) are more likely than others. This makes it clear how often we can expect a certain number of cars to tailgate as they pass.
Expected Value
Expected value is a key concept in statistics that provides a means of predicting the average outcome of a random process over an infinite number of trials. In a binomial distribution, it gives us an estimate of the number of times an event will occur.
For our situation with tailgating drivers, the expected number of cars that will tailgate can be calculated using this formula: \[E(r) = n \times p\]
Where \( n \) is the total number of trials and \( p \) is the probability of success for each trial. With \( n = 12 \) cars and a tailgating probability of \( p = 0.35 \), we find:\[E(r) = 12 \times 0.35 = 4.2\]
This result of 4.2 suggests that, on average, a bit more than 4 cars out of 12 will tailgate. While you can’t have a fraction of a car tailgating in practice, this figure gives a useful average or expectation across many repeated scenarios of similar situations.
Standard Deviation
Standard deviation is a measure that is used to quantify the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of values. In simple terms, it tells us about how spread out the results can be. For a binomial distribution such as our example, the standard deviation helps us understand how much individual observations of tailgating cars can stray from the expected average.
The formula for the standard deviation in a binomial distribution is:
\[ \sigma = \sqrt{n \times p \times (1-p)} \]
Substituting our values, where \( n = 12 \) and \( p = 0.35 \), we compute:\[ \sigma = \sqrt{12 \times 0.35 \times 0.65} \approx 1.67 \]
This value of approximately 1.67 means that the number of tailgating cars can typically deviate by about 1.67 cars from the expected value of 4.2 across multiple observed trials. Thus, if you imagine repeating this exercise of being passed by 12 cars many times, this standard deviation guides us on the variability we might observe in the number of tailgaters each time.

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