Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 1 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge / 2017 / Paper 1 / 16 / b / Solution

Assume that wrong-note events are independent events and that each note has the same error probability $p$, with $0\le p\le 1$. Then their count $N$ has a binomial distribution. Choose the $n$ mistaken positions in $\left(\genfrac{}{}{0ex}{}{100}{n}\right)$ ways and multiply the probabilities of the errors and correct notes:The endpoint cases $p=0$ or $p=1$ are understood by continuity, giving deterministic counts. More than half means at least $51$ mistakes, soThe single-note error probability alone would not determine this count distribution if mistakes were correlated; independence is the additional standard modeling assumption.