Original practice · fully worked
Original variant: inspection time within a component lifetime
A component's lifetime, in hours, has density twice its lifetime value on the interval from zero to one. After the lifetime is realized, an inspection time is selected uniformly between installation and failure. Conditional on the inspection occurring after 0.25 hour, calculate the probability that the component's total lifetime exceeds 0.75 hour.
- A
0.3125 - B
0.4375 - C
0.4444 - D
0.5556 - E
0.7500
Answer and calculation
The lifetime density and the conditional inspection-time density cancel, leaving a constant joint density over the feasible triangle. The conditioning region has probability 9/16 and the favorable part has probability 5/16, so their ratio is 5/9 and choice D.
Setup
Setup
Let L be the total lifetime and T the inspection time. Conditional on a realized lifetime, the inspection time is uniform over that lifetime.
fL(ℓ)=2ℓ,fT∣L(t∣ℓ)=ℓ1 fL,T(ℓ,t)=2,0<t<ℓ<1 Model
Model
Form the conditioning probability and the joint probability of a late inspection with a lifetime above three-quarters of an hour.
Pr(T>1/4)=∫1/41∫t12dℓdt Pr(L>3/4,T>1/4)=∫3/41∫1/4ℓ2dtdℓ Compute
Compute
Evaluate both regions and divide the favorable probability by the conditioning probability.
Pr(T>1/4)=169,Pr(L>3/4,T>1/4)=165 Pr(L>3/4∣T>1/4)=9/165/16=95=0.5555555556 Answer
Answer
The conditional probability is approximately 0.5556.
0.5556(D)