Exam 8: Confidence Interval Estimation

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, it is possible that the 95% confidence interval calculated from the data will not contain the sample proportion of managers who have caught salespeople cheating on an expense report.

TABLE 8-9 The superintendent of a unified school district of a small town wants to make sure that no more than 5% of the students skip more than 10 days of school in a year. A random sample of 145 students from a population of 800 showed that 12 students skipped more than 10 days of school last year. -Referring to Table 8-9, the superintendent can conclude with 95% level of confidence that no more than 5% of the students in the unified school district skipped more than 10 days of school last year.

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, approximately how large a sample did her assistant use to determine the interval estimate?

In forming a 90% confidence interval for a population mean from a sample size of 22, the number of degrees of freedom from the t distribution equals 22.

TABLE 8-8 The president of a university would like to estimate the proportion of the student population that owns a personal computer. In a sample of 500 students, 417 own a personal computer. -Referring to Table 8-8, a 95% confidence interval for the proportion of the student population who own a personal computer is narrower than a 99% confidence interval.

TABLE 8-12 A poll was conducted by the marketing department of a video game company to determine the popularity of a new game that was targeted to be launched in three months. Telephone interviews with 1,500 young adults were conducted which revealed that 49% said they would purchase the new game. The margin of error was ±3 percentage points. -Referring to Table 8-12, what is the needed sample size to obtain a 90% confidence interval estimate of the percentage of the targeted young adults who will purchase the new game by allowing the same level of margin of error?

TABLE 8-3 To become an actuary, it is necessary to pass a series of 10 exams, including the most important one, an exam in probability and statistics. An insurance company wants to estimate the mean score on this exam for actuarial students who have enrolled in a special study program. They take a sample of 8 actuarial students in this program and determine that their scores are: 2, 5, 8, 8, 7, 6, 5, and 7. This sample will be used to calculate a 90% confidence interval for the mean score for actuarial students in the special study program. -Referring to Table 8-3, the confidence interval will be based on ________ degrees of freedom.

Suppose a 95% confidence interval for μ has been constructed. If it is decided to take a larger sample and to decrease the confidence level of the interval, then the resulting interval width would ________. (Assume that the sample statistics gathered would not change very much for the new sample.)

TABLE 8-12 A poll was conducted by the marketing department of a video game company to determine the popularity of a new game that was targeted to be launched in three months. Telephone interviews with 1,500 young adults were conducted which revealed that 49% said they would purchase the new game. The margin of error was ±3 percentage points. -Referring to Table 8-12, the sampling error is 3%.

TABLE 8-8 The president of a university would like to estimate the proportion of the student population that owns a personal computer. In a sample of 500 students, 417 own a personal computer. -Referring to Table 8-8, the parameter of interest is the mean number of students in the population who own a personal computer.

Other things being equal, the confidence interval for the mean will be wider for 95% confidence than for 90% confidence.

A university dean is interested in determining the proportion of students who receive some sort of financial aid. Rather than examine the records for all students, the dean randomly selects 200 students and finds that 118 of them are receiving financial aid. If the dean wanted to estimate the proportion of all students receiving financial aid to within 3% with 99% reliability, how many students would need to be sampled?

A confidence interval was used to estimate the proportion of statistics students who are female. A random sample of 72 statistics students generated the following 90% confidence interval: (0.438, 0.642). Using the information above, what total size sample would be necessary if we wanted to estimate the true proportion to within 0.08 using 95% confidence?

TABLE 8-8 The president of a university would like to estimate the proportion of the student population that owns a personal computer. In a sample of 500 students, 417 own a personal computer. -Referring to Table 8-8, a 99% confidence interval will contain 99% of the student population who own a personal computer.

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, the parameter of interest is 54/120 = 0.45.

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 critical value for a 95% confidence interval estimate of the population proportion of managers who have caught salespeople cheating on an expense report is ________.

TABLE 8-3 To become an actuary, it is necessary to pass a series of 10 exams, including the most important one, an exam in probability and statistics. An insurance company wants to estimate the mean score on this exam for actuarial students who have enrolled in a special study program. They take a sample of 8 actuarial students in this program and determine that their scores are: 2, 5, 8, 8, 7, 6, 5, and 7. This sample will be used to calculate a 90% confidence interval for the mean score for actuarial students in the special study program. -Referring to Table 8-3, a 90% confidence interval for the mean score of actuarial students in the special program is from ________ to ________.

The width of a confidence interval estimate for a proportion will be

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, a 99% confidence interval for the proportion of the student population who feel comfortable reporting cheating by their fellow students is from ________ to ________.

A university dean is interested in determining the proportion of students who receive some sort of financial aid. Rather than examine the records for all students, the dean randomly selects 200 students and finds that 118 of them are receiving financial aid. The 95% confidence interval for π is 0.59 ± 0.07. Interpret this interval.