In: Statistics and Probability
Lyft has recently launched “Lyft Scooters” in various cities across the U.S. Imagine the company selects two individuals, Zahra in Madison, Wisconsin, and Mateo in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to test Lyft Scooters in their respective cities. Each recognizes that she or he has a 2% chance of experiencing an accident. If an accident occurs, a $12,000 will be lost due to injury and property damage.
For questions 4-11, assume that Zahra and Mateo decide to pool (or share equally) their losses. The losses are uncorrelated.
Based on your work so far, why might Zahra and Mateo choose to pool their losses?
What is the combined probability distribution when the two-loss potentials are pooled?
Given: Both Zahra and Mateo follow the same distribution as shown below,
Total loss | Probability |
12000 | 0.02 |
0 | 0.98 |
The losses are uncorrelated for two distribution. Now, the combined probability distribution is obtained as follows,
Total loss | Probability | |
No accident | 0 | 0.98*0.98=0.9604 |
Zahra | 6000 | 0.02*0.98=0.0196 |
Mateo | 6000 | 0.02*0.98=0.0196 |
Both | 12000 | 0.02*0.02=0.0004 |
What is the expected total loss for the distribution of pooled losses?
The expected loss is obtained using the following formula,
What is the expected loss per person from the distribution
of pooled losses?
The expected loss per person is,
What is the standard deviation of the distribution of
pooled losses?
The standard deviation for the pooled loss is obtained using the following formula,
What is the standard deviation of the distribution of
pooled losses, per person?
The standard deviation for the loss per person is,
The expected total loss
Since the expected loss for pooled distribution doesn't depend on the number of people, the expected total loss will be $240
The expected loss per person
The expected total loss will be $240
The standard deviation of the total loss
Since we saw that the standard deviation for the pooled distribution decreases as the number of people increases, the standard deviation will decrease.
The standard deviation of loss per person
Based on your work so far, why might Zahra and Mateo choose to pool
their losses?
Since the standard deviation is decreased, they should choose to pool their losses.