Question: High school academic rank. Select a first-year college student at random and ask what his or her academic rank was in high school. Here are the probabilities, based on proportions from a large sample survey of first-year students:
Rank Top 20% Second 20% Third 20% Fourth 20% Lowest 20%
Probability 0.44 0.26 0.23 0.06 0.01
(a) What is the sum of these probabilities? Why do you expect the sum to have this value?
(b) What is the probability that a randomly chosen first-year college student was not in the top 20% of his or her high school class?
(c) What is the probability that a first-year student was in the top 40% in high school?