Original practice · fully worked
Original variant: scale a fault rate across exposure lengths
Faults along a cable follow a homogeneous Poisson process. A two-kilometer test section has probability 0.64 of containing no faults. Calculate the probability that a five-kilometer section contains exactly one fault.
- A
0.2856 - B
0.3277 - C
0.3656 - D
0.6723 - E
1.1157
Answer and calculation
The one-kilometer zero probability is √(0.64)=0.8, so the five-kilometer mean is -5ln(0.8)=1.1157. Multiplying this mean by the five-kilometer zero probability 0.8⁵ gives 0.3656, choice C.
Setup
Setup
Let r be the fault rate per kilometer. The zero probability over length L is the Poisson zero mass with mean rL.
Pr(NL=0)=e−rL Model
Model
Use the two-kilometer calibration to recover the rate and scale it to five kilometers.
e−2r=0.64 e−r=0.80 μ5=5r=−5ln(0.80)=1.1157177566 Compute
Compute
Evaluate the one-count Poisson mass using the five-kilometer mean and its zero probability.
Pr(N5=0)=e−5r=(0.80)5=0.32768 Pr(N5=1)=e−μ5μ5 Pr(N5=1)=0.32768(1.1157177566)=0.3655983945 Answer
Answer
The exactly-one probability rounds to 0.3656.
0.3656(C)