2 Geoffrey is a university lecturer. He has to prepare five questions for an examination. He knows by experience that it takes about 3 hours to prepare a question, and he models the time (in minutes) taken to prepare one by the Normally distributed random variable \(X\) with mean 180 and standard deviation 12, independently for all questions.
- One morning, Geoffrey has a gap of 2 hours 50 minutes ( 170 minutes) between other activities. Find the probability that he can prepare a question in this time.
- One weekend, Geoffrey can devote 14 hours to preparing the complete examination paper. Find the probability that he can prepare all five questions in this time.
A colleague, Helen, has to check the questions.
- She models the time (in minutes) to check a question by the Normally distributed random variable \(Y\) with mean 50 and standard deviation 6, independently for all questions and independently of \(X\). Find the probability that the total time for Geoffrey to prepare a question and Helen to check it exceeds 4 hours.
- When working under pressure of deadlines, Helen models the time to check a question in a different way. She uses the Normally distributed random variable \(\frac { 1 } { 4 } X\), where \(X\) is as above. Find the length of time, as given by this model, which Helen needs to ensure that, with probability 0.9 , she has time to check a question.
Ian, an educational researcher, suggests that a better model for the time taken to prepare a question would be a constant \(k\) representing "thinking time" plus a random variable \(T\) representing the time required to write the question itself, independently for all questions.
- Taking \(k\) as 45 and \(T\) as Normally distributed with mean 120 and standard deviation 10 (all units are minutes), find the probability according to Ian's model that a question can be prepared in less than 2 hours 30 minutes.
Juliet, an administrator, proposes that the examination should be reduced in time and shorter questions should be used.
- Juliet suggests that Ian's model should be used for the time taken to prepare such shorter questions but with \(k = 30\) and \(T\) replaced by \(\frac { 3 } { 5 } T\). Find the probability as given by this model that a question can be prepared in less than \(1 \frac { 3 } { 4 }\) hours.