Question

Last year, at Northern Manufacturing Company, 200 people had colds during the year. One hundred fifty- five people who did no exercising had colds, and the remainder of the people with colds were involved in a weekly exercise program. Half of the 1,000 employees were involved in some type of exercise.

a. What is the probability that an employee will have a cold next year?
b. Given that an employee is involved in an exercise program, what is the probability that he or she will get a cold next year?

Answer 1

a) P=0.2

b) P=0.1

Explanation:

We have a total of 1,000 employees in the company.

Out of this 1,000 employees, 200 had colds. If this proportion allow us to estimate the probability of next year colds, we have:

`P(colds)=(200)/(1000) =0.2`

If we take only the ones that are involved in excercise programs, we have 50 cases of cold out of 500 employees (half of the total employees).

The probabillity of cold for them is then:

`P(cold\,|\,exercise)=(50)/(500)=0.1`