Jamie Banks

Intro to Stats
Professor Bartholomew
4 December 2014

Confidence Interval Estimates

A confidence interval gives an estimated range of values which is likely to include an unknown
population parameter.
Proportion- I am 99% confident that the proportion of yellow skittles per bag falls between 17%
and 22.4% based on our sample proportion of 19.7%.
Mean- I am 95% confident that the mean number of candies per bag falls between 59.18 and
60.42 based on our sample mean of 59.8 candies per bag.
Standard Deviation- I am 98% confident that the standard deviation should fall between 1.35 and
2.68. Our sample standard deviation, however is 1.80 and does not fall between the range that we
computed.
Hypothesis Testing
A hypothesis test is a procedure for testing a claim about a property of a population.
Test #1: Z is not more extreme than Z* so we will fail to reject the null hypothesis. There is
sufficient evidence to support the claim that 20% of skittles in a bag are red in color.
Test #2: Because our t value of 13.33 is so far outside the range of test statistic of 2.795, we
reject the null hypothesis of the mean being equal to 55 candies per bag.
Reflection
In order to properly complete all the tests sufficient and correct information is needed. To be
able to compute CI we need a random sampling. Proportions require that we have at least 5
successes as well as failures. We should also have a sample that is more than 30 with a normal
distribution to calculate mean and standard deviation. To be able to compute our hypothesis
testing we need to have only to outcomes the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis.
Errors might have occurred because of the small sample size and of course human error. I
conclude from the confidence intervals that most of our data is accurate. It should be relatively
easy to determine the number of each color of skittle per bag within an acceptable range.