Exam 8: Confidence Interval Estimation

TABLE 8-2 A quality control engineer is interested in the mean length of sheet insulation being cut automatically by machine. The desired mean length of the insulation is 12 feet. It is known that the standard deviation in the cutting length is 0.15 feet. A sample of 70 cut sheets yields a mean length of 12.14 feet. This sample will be used to obtain a 99% confidence interval for the mean length cut by machine. -Referring to Table 8-2, the confidence interval indicates that the machine is not working properly.

TABLE 8-14 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 8-14, 1,500 is the size of the

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 to the manager is the proportion of potential customers in this sample that recognize the new product.

A major department store chain is interested in estimating the mean amount its credit card customers spent on their first visit to the chain's new store in the mall. Fifteen credit card accounts were randomly sampled and analyzed with the following results: X = $50.50 and S = 20. Assuming the distribution of the amount spent on their first visit is approximately normal, what is the shape of the sampling distribution of the sample mean that will be used to create the desired confidence interval for μ?

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, it is possible that the 99% confidence interval calculated from the data will not contain the population mean number of rooms rented daily in a given month.

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 people will recognize the product between 36% and 54% of the time.

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

A sample of 100 fuses from a very large shipment is found to have 10 that are defective. The 95% confidence interval would indicate that, for this shipment, the proportion of defective fuses is between 0 and 0.28.

TABLE 8-5 A sample of salary offers (in thousands of dollars) given to management majors is: 48, 51, 46, 52, 47, 48, 47, 50, 51, and 59. Using this data to obtain a 95% confidence interval resulted in an interval from 47.19 to 52.61. -Referring to Table 8-5, the confidence interval obtained is valid only if the distribution of the population of salary offers is normal.

TABLE 8-12 The president of a university is concerned that the percentage of students who have cheated on an exam is higher than the 1% acceptable level. A confidential random sample of 1,000 students from a population of 7,000 revealed that 6 of them said that they had cheated on an exam during the last semester. -Referring to Table 8-12, using the 90% one-sided confidence interval, the president can be 95% confident that no more than 1% of the students at the university had cheated on an exam during the last semester.

TABLE 8-11 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 8-11, a 99% confidence interval for the proportion of the student population who feel comfortable reporting cheating by their fellow students is from ________ to ________.

The county clerk wants to estimate the proportion of voters who will need special election facilities. Suppose a sample of 400 voters was taken. If 150 need special election facilities, calculate a 90% confidence interval for the population proportion.

TABLE 8-13 A sales and marketing management magazine conducted a survey of salespeople cheating on their expense reports and other unethical conduct. In the survey of 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 8-13, 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.

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?

TABLE 8-12 The president of a university is concerned that the percentage of students who have cheated on an exam is higher than the 1% acceptable level. A confidential random sample of 1,000 students from a population of 7,000 revealed that 6 of them said that they had cheated on an exam during the last semester. -Referring to Table 8-12, what is the upper bound of the 90% one-sided confidence interval for the proportion of students who had cheated on an exam during the last 12 months?

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, they should sample ________ employees if they want to estimate the mean score of the employees within 5 points with 90% 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 for the proportion of the student population who own a personal computer is from ________ to ________.

TABLE 8-5 A sample of salary offers (in thousands of dollars) given to management majors is: 48, 51, 46, 52, 47, 48, 47, 50, 51, and 59. Using this data to obtain a 95% confidence interval resulted in an interval from 47.19 to 52.61. -Referring to Table 8-5, 95% of the salary offers are between 47.19 and 52.61.

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 90% confidence interval calculated from the same data would be narrower than a 99% confidence interval.

TABLE 8-13 A sales and marketing management magazine conducted a survey of salespeople cheating on their expense reports and other unethical conduct. In the survey of 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 8-13, a 95% confidence interval will contain 95% of the population proportion of managers who have caught salespeople cheating on an expense report.