OCR S2 2010 June — Question 8

Exam BoardOCR
ModuleS2 (Statistics 2)
Year2010
SessionJune
TopicContinuous Probability Distributions and Random Variables
TypeSingle-piece PDF with k

8 The continuous random variable \(X\) has probability density function given by $$\mathrm { f } ( x ) = \begin{cases} k x ^ { - a } & x \geqslant 1
0 & \text { otherwise } \end{cases}$$ where \(k\) and \(a\) are constants and \(a\) is greater than 1 .
  1. Show that \(k = a - 1\).
  2. Find the variance of \(X\) in the case \(a = 4\).
  3. It is given that \(\mathrm { P } ( X < 2 ) = 0.9\). Find the value of \(a\), correct to 3 significant figures.