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 is valid only if the lengths cut are normally distributed.

The t distribution is used to construct confidence intervals for the population mean when the population standard deviation is unknown.

The difference between the upper limit of a confidence interval and the point estimate used in constructing the confidence interval is called the sampling error.

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, this confidence interval is only valid if the scores on the Fortunato test are normally distributed.

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, construct a 95% confidence interval estimate of the population proportion of managers who have caught salespeople giving a kickback to a customer.

The t distribution approaches the standardized normal distribution when the number of degrees of freedom increases.

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.

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 The president of a university is concerned that illicit drug use on campus is higher than the 5% targeted level. A random sample of 250 students from a population of 2,000 revealed that 7 of them had used illicit drugs during the last 12 months. -Referring to Table 8-10, what is the critical value for the 90% one-sided confidence interval for the proportion of students who had used illicit drugs during the last 12 months?

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, it is possible that the mean of the population is not between 47.19 and 52.61.

In the construction of confidence intervals, if all other quantities are unchanged, an increase in the sample size will lead to a ________ interval.

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 critical value to use in obtaining the confidence interval is ________.

The t distribution allows the calculation of confidence intervals for means for small samples when the population variance is not known, regardless of the shape of the distribution in the population.

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, it is possible that the mean of the population is between 47.19 and 52.61.

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 critical value for the 90% one-sided confidence interval for the proportion of students who had cheated on an exam during the last 12 months?

An economist is interested in studying the incomes of consumers in a particular country. The population standard deviation is known to be $1,000. A random sample of 50 individuals resulted in a mean income of $15,000. What is the upper end point in a 99% confidence interval for the average income?

A university system enrolling hundreds of thousands of students is considering a change in the way students pay for their education. Currently, the students pay $400 per credit hour. The university system administrators are contemplating charging each student a set fee of $7,000 per quarter, regardless of how many credit hours each takes. To see if this proposal would be economically feasible, the administrators would like to know how many credit hours, on the average, each student takes per quarter. A random sample of 250 students yields a mean of 14.1 credit hours per quarter and a standard deviation of 2.3 credit hours per quarter. Suppose the administration wanted to estimate the mean to within 0.1 hours at 95% reliability and assumed that the sample standard deviation provided a good estimate for the population standard deviation. How large a total sample would they need to take?

Which of the following is not true about the Student's t distribution?

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

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 critical value for a 99% confidence interval for this sample is ________.