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/Solutions

1. Peaks and valleys

Suppose we flip a fair coin n times. For each i, 1≤i≤n, let Xi be the indicator of the event that the i-th coin-flip is heads. For each i, 2≤i≤n-1, let Yi be the indicator for the event that Xi-1=0, Xi=1, and Xi+1=0; if this even occurs we say that the sequence of coin-flips has a peak at i. Let $S = \sum_{i=2}^{n-1} Y_i$ be the random variable counting the number of peaks in the sequence.

  1. What is E[S]?
  2. What is Var[S]?

2. Stronger than Markov

Let X1...Xn be the indicator variables for independent coin-flips with bias p; that is, each Xi is 1 with probability p and 0 with probability 1-p. Let $S = \sum_{i=1}^{n} X_i$.

  1. Compute E[eS].

  2. Use the expected value above and Markov's inequality to compute an upper bound on Pr[S≥m] = Pr[eS≥em].

  3. Can you find values of p, n, and m, for which this bound is smaller than the bound E[S]/m given by a direct application of Markov's inequality?

3. At the genome factory

A custom gene splicing shop charges $2 to splice a thymine (T) amino acid into a single-strand DNA fragment, and $1 each for adenine (A) and cytosine (C). Guanine (G) is free. So, for example, constructing the sequence GATTACA costs 0+1+2+2+1+1+1=8 dollars.

  1. Write a generating function such that the zk coefficient gives the number of ways to buy a single amino acid for k dollars.

  2. Write a generating function such that the zk coefficient gives the number of ways to buy a single DNA strand consisting of n amino acids for k dollars.

  3. Give a simple expression for the number of strands of length n that cost k dollars.

2014-06-17 11:57