CAIE FP2 2018 November — Question 8

Exam BoardCAIE
ModuleFP2 (Further Pure Mathematics 2)
Year2018
SessionNovember
TopicGeometric Distribution
TypeDetermine p from given mean or variance

8 Lan starts a new job on Monday. He will catch the bus to work every day from Monday to Friday inclusive. The probability that he will get a seat on the bus has the constant value \(p\). The random variable \(X\) denotes the number of days that Lan will catch the bus until he is able to get a seat. The probability that Lan will not get a seat on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday of his first week is 0.4096 .
  1. Show that \(p = 0.2\).
  2. Find the probability that Lan first gets a seat on Monday of the second week in his new job.
  3. Find the least integer \(N\) such that \(\mathrm { P } ( X \leqslant N ) > 0.9\), and identify the day and the week that corresponds to this value of \(N\).