Grinstead-Snell-Probability · Problem 24

Expected Value and Variance

Mathematics · variance-discrete-random-variables

Problem

A professor wishes to make up a true-false exam with nn questions. She assumes that she can design the problems in such a way that a student will answer the jjth problem correctly with probability pjp_j, and that the answers to the various problems may be considered independent experiments. Let SnS_n be the number of problems that a student will get correct. The professor wishes to choose pjp_j so that E(Sn)=.7nE(S_n) = .7n and so that the variance of SnS_n is as large as possible. Show that, to achieve this, she should choose pj=.7p_j = .7 for all jj; that is, she should make all the problems have the same difficulty.

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