OCR S2 2013 January — Question 8

Exam BoardOCR
ModuleS2 (Statistics 2)
Year2013
SessionJanuary
TopicPoisson Distribution
TypeExplain or apply conditions in context

8 In a large city the number of traffic lights that fail in one day of 24 hours is denoted by \(Y\). It may be assumed that failures occur randomly.
  1. Explain what the statement "failures occur randomly" means.
  2. State, in context, two different conditions that must be satisfied if \(Y\) is to be modelled by a Poisson distribution, and for each condition explain whether you think it is likely to be met in this context.
  3. For this part you may assume that \(Y\) is well modelled by the distribution \(\operatorname { Po } ( \lambda )\). It is given that \(\mathrm { P } ( Y = 7 ) = \mathrm { P } ( Y = 8 )\). Use an algebraic method to calculate the value of \(\lambda\) and hence calculate the corresponding value of \(\mathrm { P } ( Y = 7 )\).