Ripley

Mathematics

27 February, 17:21

A bookstore rents books to students for $2 per book. The cost of running the bookstore is $300 per hour. The numbers of books and the probabilities that the bookstore would rent them in an hour mimics the distribution of the outcomes of flipping four coins. The probability of renting a number of books was observed to be the same as the number of heads that appear in a four-coin flip. This distribution is represented in the table.

Books Rented Probability

0 1/16

1 4/16

2 6/16

3 4/16

4 1/16

Students usually rent four books a week during exams. The store manager decides to charge a weekly fee of $6 for renting an unlimited number of books. This is a (fair, unfair) decision for the students as they will pay (more than, less than, the same as) they would pay to rent four books.