Poisson Distribution

1 The number of emergency telephone calls to the electricity board office in a certain area in t minutes is
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known to follow a Poisson distribution with mean 80t

(i) Find the probability that there will be at least 3 emergency telephone calls to the office in any 20-
minute period. [4]

(ii) The probability that no emergency telephone call is made to the office in a period of k minutes is 0.9.
Find k. [4]
[07/O/N/03 – Q4]

2 A shopkeeper sells electric fans. The demand for fans follows a Poisson distribution with mean 3.2 per week.

(i) Find the probability that the demand is exactly 2 fans in any one week. [2]

(ii) The shopkeeper has 4 fans in his shop at the beginning of a week. Find the probability that this will
not be enough to satisfy the demand for fans in that week. [4]

(iii) Given instead that he has n fans in his shop at the beginning of a week, find, by trial and error, the
least value of n for which the probability of his not being able to satisfy the demand for fans in that
week is less than 0.05. [4]

07/O/N/05 – Q6
3 A dressmaker makes dresses for Easifit Fashions. Each dress requires 2.5 m2 of material. Faults occur
randomly in the material at an average rate of 4.8 per 20 m2.

(i) Find the probability that a randomly chosen dress contains at least 2 faults. [3]

Each dress has a belt attached to it to make an outfit. Independently of faults in the material, the probability
that a belt is faulty is 0.03. Find the probability that, in an outfit,

(ii) neither the dress nor its belt is faulty, [2]

(iii) the dress has at least one fault and its belt is faulty. [2]

The dressmaker attaches 300 randomly chosen belts to 300 randomly chosen dresses. An outfit in which the
dress has at least one fault and its belt is faulty is rejected.

(iv) Use a suitable approximation to find the probability that fewer than 3 outfits are rejected. [3]

07/M/J/06 – Q6
4 The random variable X denotes the number of worms on a one metre length of a country path after heavy
rain. It is given that X has a Poisson distribution.

(i) For one particular path, the probability that X = 2 is three times the probability that X = 4. Find the
probability that there are more than 3 worms on a 3.5 metre length of this path. [5]

(ii) For another path the mean of X is 1.3.

(a) On this path the probability that there is at least 1 worm on a length of k metres is 0.96. Find k.
[4]
(b) Find the probability that there are more than 1250 worms on a one kilometre length of this path.
[3]
(i) State two conditions for X to be modelled by a Poisson distribution. [2]

Assume now that X ~ Po(1.8).

(ii) Find P(2 < X < 6). [2]

(iii) The manager promises the team a bonus if they score at least 1 goal in each of the next 10 matches.
Find the probability that they win the bonus. [3]

5 The probability that a new car of a certain type has faulty brakes is 0.008. A random sample of 520 new cars
of this type is chosen, and the number, X, having faulty brakes is noted.

(i) Describe fully the distribution of X and describe also a suitable approximating distribution. Justify this
approximating distribution. [4]

(ii) Use your approximating distribution to find

(a) P(X > 3), [2]

(b) the smallest value of n such that P(X = n) > P(X = n + 1). [3]

71/M/J/13 – Q4
6 The proportion of people who have a particular gene, on average, is 1 in 1000. A random sample of 3500
people in a certain country is chosen and the number of people, X, having the gene is found.

(i) State the distribution of X and state also an appropriate approximating distribution. Give the values of
any parameters in each case. Justify your choice of the approximating distribution. [3]

(ii) Use the approximating distribution to find P(X ≤ 3). [2]

71/M/J/14 – Q4

7 (i) The following tables show the probability distributions for the random variables V and W.

For each of the variables V and W state how you can tell from its probability distribution that it does
NOT have a Poisson distribution. [2]

(ii) The random variable X has the distribution Po(). It is given that
P(X = 0) = p and P(X = 1) = 2.5p,
where p is a constant.

(a) Show that  = 2.5. [1]

(b) Find P(X ≥ 3). [2]

(iii) The random variable Y has the distribution Po(), where  > 30. Using a suitable approximating
distribution, it is found that P(Y > 40) = 0.5793 correct to 4 decimal places. Find . [5]

71/M/J/14 – Q8
8 A Lost Property office is open 7 days a week. It may be assumed that items are handed in to the office
randomly, singly and independently.

(i) State another condition for the number of items handed in to have a Poisson distribution. [1]

It is now given that the number of items handed in per week has the distribution Po(4.0).

(ii) Find the probability that exactly 2 items are handed in on a particular day. [2]

(iii) Find the probability that at least 4 items are handed in during a 10-day period. [3]

(iv) Find the probability that, during a certain week, 5 items are handed in altogether, but no items are
handed in on the first day of the week. [3]

73/M/J/14 – Q7
9 A publishing firm has found that errors in the first draft of a new book occur at random and that, on average,
there is 1 error in every 3 pages of a first draft. Find the probability that in a particular first draft there are

(i) exactly 2 errors in 10 pages, [2]

(ii) at least 3 errors in 6 pages, [3]

(iii) fewer than 50 errors in 200 pages. [4]

71/M/J/15 – Q6

10 In a certain lottery, 10 500 tickets have been sold altogether and each ticket has a probability of 0.0002 of
winning a prize. The random variable X denotes the number of prize-winning tickets that have been sold.
 (i) State, with a justification, an approximating distribution for X. [3]

(ii) Use your approximating distribution to find P(X < 4). [3]

(iii) Use your approximating distribution to find the conditional probability that X < 4, given that X ≥ 1.
[4]

72/M/J/15 – Q7

11 People arrive at a checkout in a store at random, and at a constant mean rate of 0.7 per minute. Find the
probability that

(i) exactly 3 people arrive at the checkout during a 5-minute period, [2]

(ii) at least 30 people arrive at the checkout during a 1-hour period. [4]

People arrive independently at another checkout in the store at random, and at a constant mean rate of 0.5
per minute.

(iii) Find the probability that a total of more than 3 people arrive at this pair of checkouts during a 2-
minute period. [4]
 73/M/J/15 – Q6
12 On average, 1 in 2500 adults has a certain medical condition.

(i) Use a suitable approximation to find the probability that, in a random sample of 4000 people, more
than 3 have this condition. [3]

(ii) In a random sample of n people, where n is large, the probability that none has the condition is less
than 0.05. Find the smallest possible value of n. [4]

71/O/N/15 – Q5

13 The number of calls received per 5-minute period at a large call centre has a Poisson distribution with mean
, where  > 30. If more than 55 calls are received in a 5-minute period, the call centre is overloaded. It has
been found that the probability of being overloaded during a randomly chosen 5-minute period is 0.01. Use
the normal approximation to the Poisson distribution to obtain a quadratic equation in √ and hence find the
value of . [5]

73/O/N/15 – Q2
14 At a certain shop the demand for hair dryers has a Poisson distribution with mean 3.4 per week.

(i) Find the probability that, in a randomly chosen two-week period, the demand is for exactly 5 hair
dryers. [3]

(ii) At the beginning of a week the shop has a certain number of hair dryers for sale. Find the probability
that the shop has enough hair dryers to satisfy the demand for the week if

(a) they have 4 hair dryers in the shop, [2]

(b) they have 5 hair dryers in the shop. [2]

(iii) Find the smallest number of hair dryers that the shop needs to have at the beginning of a week so that
the probability of being able to satisfy the demand that week is at least 0.9. [3]

72/M/J/16 – Q6

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62/F/M/22 – Q7
26 The number of lions seen per day during a standard safari has the distribution Po(0.8). The number of lions
seen per day during an off-road safari has the distribution Po(2.7). The two distributions are independent.

(i) Susan goes on a standard safari for one day. Find the probability that she sees at least 2 lions. [2]

(ii) Deena goes on a standard safari for 3 days and then on an off-road safari for 2 days. Find the probability
that she sees a total of fewer than 5 lions. [3]

(iii) Khaled goes on a standard safari for n days, where n is an integer. He wants to ensure that his chance
of not seeing any lions is less than 10%. Find the smallest possible value of n. [3]

73/M/J/12 – Q4

27 A random variable X has the distribution Po(1.6).

(i) The random variable R is the sum of three independent values of X. Find P(R < 4). [3]

(ii) The random variable S is the sum of n independent values of X. It is given that
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P(S = 4) = 3
 P(S = 2).
 Find n. [4]

(iii) The random variable T is the sum of 40 independent values of X. Find P(T > 75). [4]

71/O/N/12 – Q7

28 Men arrive at a clinic independently and at random, at a constant mean rate of 0.2 per minute. Women arrive
at the same clinic independently and at random, at a constant mean rate of 0.3 per minute.

(i) Find the probability that at least 2 men and at least 3 women arrive at the clinic during a 5-minute
period. [4]

(ii) Find the probability that fewer than 36 people arrive at the clinic during a 1-hour period. [5]

73/O/N/16 – Q7

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