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The number of sick days an employee takes in one year is uniformly distributed on the values 0, 1, 2, …,10 and is independent from one year to the next. In a five-year period, what is the probability that an employee takes more than 5 sick days in at most one of the years?

User ArkadyB
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Answer:

the probability that an employee takes more than 5 sick days in at most one of the years in a five-year period is approximately 0.946.

Explanation:

Let X be the number of sick days an employee takes in one year. We know that X is uniformly distributed on the values 0, 1, 2, …, 10, which means that the probability of X taking any value in this range is the same.

Let Y be the number of years in the five-year period that the employee takes more than 5 sick days. We want to find the probability that Y is at most 1.

First, we can find the probability that an employee takes more than 5 sick days in any given year. Since X is uniformly distributed on the values 0, 1, 2, …, 10, we have:

P(X > 5) = (10 - 5 + 1) / (10 + 1) = 6 / 11

Next, we can use the binomial distribution to find the probability that an employee takes more than 5 sick days in exactly one year out of five. Let p be the probability that an employee takes more than 5 sick days in any given year (i.e., p = 6/11), and let n = 5 be the number of years. Then:

P(Y = 1) = C(5, 1) * p * (1 - p)^(5-1) = 5 * (6/11) * (5/11)^4

Finally, we can find the probability that an employee takes more than 5 sick days in at most one of the years by adding the probabilities of taking more than 5 sick days in zero years and in one year:

P(Y ≤ 1) = P(Y = 0) + P(Y = 1) = (1 - p)^5 + 5 * (6/11) * (5/11)^4

Therefore, the probability that an employee takes more than 5 sick days in at most one of the years in a five-year period is approximately 0.946.

User Tim Helmstedt
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