Exam 8: Confidence Interval Estimation

The standardized normal distribution is used to develop a confidence interval estimate of the population proportion regardless of whether the population standard deviation is known.

TABLE 8-10 A university wanted to find out the percentage of students who felt comfortable reporting cheating by their fellow students. A survey of 2,800 students was conducted and the students were asked if they felt comfortable reporting cheating by their fellow students. The results were 1,344 answered "yes" and 1,456 answered "no". -Referring to Table 8-10, it is possible that the 99% confidence interval calculated from the data will not contain the sample proportion of students who feel comfortable reporting cheating by their fellow students.

As an aid to the establishment of personnel requirements, the director of a hospital wishes to estimate the mean number of people who are admitted to the emergency room during a 24-hour period. The director randomly selects 64 different 24-hour periods and determines the number of admissions for each. For this sample, = 19.8 and S = 5. Which of the following assumptions is necessary in order for a confidence interval to be valid?

Given a sample mean of 2.1 and a sample standard deviation of 0.7 from a sample of 10 data points, a 90% confidence interval will have a width of 2.36.

Suppose a 95% confidence interval for μ turns out to be (1,000, 2,100). To make more useful inferences from the data, it is desired to reduce the width of the confidence interval. Which of the following will result in a reduced interval width?

TABLE 8-6 After an extensive advertising campaign, the manager of a company wants to estimate the proportion of potential customers that recognize a new product. She samples 120 potential consumers and finds that 54 recognize this product. She uses this sample information to obtain a 95% confidence interval that goes from 0.36 to 0.54. -Referring to Table 8-6, 95% of the time, the sample proportion of people that recognize the product will fall between 0.36 and 0.54.

TABLE 8-10 A university wanted to find out the percentage of students who felt comfortable reporting cheating by their fellow students. A survey of 2,800 students was conducted and the students were asked if they felt comfortable reporting cheating by their fellow students. The results were 1,344 answered "yes" and 1,456 answered "no". -Referring to Table 8-10, we are 99% confident that the total numbers of the student population who feel comfortable reporting cheating by their fellow students is between 0.4557 and 0.5043.

A sample size of 5 provides a sample mean of 9.6. If the population variance is known to be 5 and the population distribution is assumed to be normal, the lower limit for a 90% confidence interval is 7.96.

The standardized normal distribution is used to develop a confidence interval estimate of the population proportion when the sample size is sufficiently large.

TABLE 8-1 The managers of a company are worried about the morale of their employees. In order to determine if a problem in this area exists, they decide to evaluate the attitudes of their employees with a standardized test. They select the Fortunato test of job satisfaction, which has a known standard deviation of 24 points. -Referring to Table 8-1, due to financial limitations, the managers decide to take a sample of 45 employees. This yields a mean score of 88.0 points. A 90% confidence interval would go from ________ to ________.

A quality control engineer is interested in estimating the proportion of defective items coming off a production line. In a sample of 300 items, 27 are defective. A 90% confidence interval for the proportion of defectives from this production line would go from ________ to ________.

A point estimate consists of a single sample statistic that is used to estimate the true population parameter.

Which of the following is NOT true about the student's t distribution?

TABLE 8-4 The actual voltages of power packs labeled as 12 volts are as follows: 11.77, 11.90, 11.64, 11.84, 12.13, 11.99, and 11.77. -Referring to Table 8-4, a confidence interval for this sample would be based on the t distribution with ________ degrees of freedom.

TABLE 8-7 A hotel chain wants to estimate the mean number of rooms rented daily in a given month. The population of rooms rented daily is assumed to be normally distributed for each month with a standard deviation of 24 rooms. During February, a sample of 25 days has a sample mean of 37 rooms. -Referring to Table 8-7, we are 99% confident that the average number of rooms rented daily in a given month is somewhere between 24.64 and 49.36.

TABLE 8-10 A university wanted to find out the percentage of students who felt comfortable reporting cheating by their fellow students. A survey of 2,800 students was conducted and the students were asked if they felt comfortable reporting cheating by their fellow students. The results were 1,344 answered "yes" and 1,456 answered "no". -Referring to Table 8-10, it is possible that the 99% confidence interval calculated from the data will not contain the proportion of student population who feel comfortable reporting cheating by their fellow students.

TABLE 8-11 A sales and marketing management magazine conducted a survey on salespeople cheating on their expense reports and other unethical conduct. In the survey on 200 managers, 58% of the managers have caught salespeople cheating on an expense report, 50% have caught salespeople working a second job on company time, 22% have caught salespeople listing a "strip bar" as a restaurant on an expense report, and 19% have caught salespeople giving a kickback to a customer. -Referring to Table 8-11, the sampling error of a 95% confidence interval estimate of the population proportion of managers who have caught salespeople giving a kickback to a customer is ________.

The sampling error can either be positive or negative.

The head librarian at the Library of Congress has asked her assistant for an interval estimate of the mean number of books checked out each day. The assistant provides the following interval estimate: from 740 to 920 books per day. If the head librarian knows that the population standard deviation is 150 books checked out per day, and she asked her assistant for a 95% confidence interval, approximately how large a sample did her assistant use to determine the interval estimate?

A prison official wants to estimate the proportion of cases of recidivism. Examining the records of 250 convicts, the official determines that there are 65 cases of recidivism. A 99% confidence interval for the proportion of cases of recidivism would go from ________ to ________.