A test for ESP
In a test for ESP (extrasensory perception), the experimenter looks at cards that are hidden from the subject. Each card contains either a star, a circle, a wave, or a square. As the experimenter looks at each of 20 cards in turn, the subject names the shape on the card.
(a) If a subject simply guesses the shape on each card, what is the probability of a successful guess on a single card? Because the cards are independent, the count of successes in 20 cards has a binomial distribution.
(b) What is the probability that a subject correctly guesses at least 10 of the 20 shapes?
(c) In many repetitions of this experiment with a subject who is guessing, how many cards will the subject guess correctly on the average? What is the standard deviation of the number of correct guesses?
(d) A standard ESP deck actually contains 25 cards. There are ?ve different shapes, each of which appears on 5 cards. The subject knows that the deck has this makeup. Is a binomial model still appropriate for the count of correct guesses in one pass through this deck? If so, what are n and p? If not, why not?