Confidence Intervals for Means and Proportions

1. A faculty advocacy group is concerned about the amount of time teachers spend each week
doing schoolwork at home. A simple random sample of 56 teachers had a mean of 8.0 hours per
week working at home after school. Construct and interpret a 95% confidence interval for the
mean number of hours per week a teacher spends working at home. Assume that the
population standard deviation is 1.5 hours per week.

2. A survey of 85 randomly selected homeowners finds that they spend a mean of $67 per month
on home maintenance. Construct and interpret a 99% confidence interval for the mean amount
of money spent per month on home maintenance by all homeowners. Assume that the
population standard deviation is $14 per month.

3. A social worker is concerned about the number of prescriptions her elderly clients have. She
would like to create a 99% confidence interval for the mean number of prescriptions per client
with a maximum error of 2 prescriptions. Assuming a standard deviation of 5.2 prescriptions,
what is the minimum number of clients she must sample?

4. A random sample of 200 computer chips is obtained from one factory and 4% are found to be
defective. Construct and interpret a 95% confidence interval for the proportion of all computer
chips from that factory that are defective.

5. Out of 54 randomly selected patients of a local hospital who were surveyed, 49 reported that
they were satisfied with the care they received. Construct and interpret a 95% confidence
interval for the percentage of all patients satisfied with their care at the hospital.

6. Suppose you wish to determine the proportion of college students in your state who receive
some form of financial aid. You want to be 98% confident of your results and have a maximum
error of 5%. Calculate the minimum sample size needed to meet these requirements given that
the financial aid office at a local institution estimates the percentage to be 78%.