Reference no: EM133200345 , Length: Word count: 3 Pages

Assignment Problem: Interview Pointers

The following points are essential to understand and appreciate as a risk analysis professional. Demonstrating a full understanding of these points during an interview will maximize your chances of impressing your interviewer, and thus increase the odds of being offered a risk analysis position.

- The philosophical underpinnings of risk management are grounded in probability theory.

- For a set of scenarios to be adequate for a risk study, it must be complete, scenarios must be non-overlapping, and the set must be finite.

- Why must the set be finite? Because we want to go home at the end of the day.

- The application of mathematics need not produce numbers to be useful. Mathematics provides a means for exploring the logical relationship among concepts.

- Threat includes intentions, capabilities, and opportunities. Absent any one of these three means that the threat will not happen. For example, if there is no opportunity, it won't happen.

- It is important to partition your set of scenarios to a level where an understanding of the risk leads to improve decisions. Any further partitioning has diminishing returns. As Albert Einstein says, "Keep it simple, but no simpler."

Question 1: You are studying a really bad adversary group. Among all the bad things they can do in the next 48 hours, you identify only three as being possible. Call these opportunities A, B, and C. Together, you assume that these three opportunities are MECE. You assess P(A) = 0.3 and that opportunity C is twice as likely as opportunity B. What is P(B)?

Question 2: You constructed a pairwise ranking of four events W, X, Y, and Z and came up with the following assessment:

X is more likely than Z

Y is more likely than X

W is more likely than X

What needed information is missing that prevents you from completing this analysis?

Question 3: You have two independent threat events Q and R. You assess P(Q) = 0.5 and P(R) = 0.4. What is the probability that both Q and R occur?

Question 4: You have two independent outcome possibilities: "bad in this way" and "bad in that way." You assess that P("bad in this way" AND "bad in that way") = 0.2. Someone told you that P("bad in this way") = 2P("bad in that way"). What is the probability of P("bad in this way" OR "bad in that way")?

Question 5: You have 10 possible futures to worry about. You were asked to construct a pairwise ranking matrix for these ten. How many pairwise comparisons must you make?

Question 6: You have N possible outcomes that can occur. Someone asked you to consider M additional outcome possibilities. Suppose each pairwise comparison takes T minutes to deliberate. How much more time will it take to complete your analysis with these extra outcome possibilities?

Question 7: You have two events A and B belonging to the same sample space. Someone draws a Venn Diagram for these events which shows two non-intersecting circles, one labeled A and the other labeled B. Both circles are the same size. The white space around the circles takes up about 40% of the area of the Venn Diagram. What is P(A)?

Question 8: You, alongside your team of fellow analysts, considered three possibility futures F, G, and H for what your target might do. You assess them to be independent. You also assess that no other futures are possible. Your team believes that F is twice as likely as G, and H is twice as likely as F. Using the ratio method, what is the probability distribution for all possible MECE possibilities including F, G, and H?

Question 9: You are studying a computer security system. You note that on a given day, the probability of the system being attacked is 0.3. What is the probability that the system will be attacked 3 OR MORE times during the week?

Question 10: You are an intelligence analyst focused on a particular known terrorist. Admittedly, you have little information about this guy, yet you are asked to assess whether he is a threat. You assess at present that the probability the patient has an intent to hurt is 0.9. You also assess the probability that he has a capability to attack at present to be 0.5. Finally, on the whole you assess the probability that he recognizes an opportunity to attack to be 0.7. What is the probability that your target is a present threat? (Assume intentions, capability, and opportunity are independent).