Fly Away

By: Grace and Jena

For this project, we studied

housefly wing lengths. Our sample size
was 100 houseflies and with a larger
sample size our solutions will be more
accurate. First, we calculated our sample
mean using the spreadsheets and found
that the mean wing length is 45.5 tenths
of a mm. This means that the average
housefly wing length is 4.55 mm. We also
used the spreadsheet to calculate a sample
standard deviation and found that it was
.392. This means that there is an average spread of .391 in the housefly wing lengths. Our degree
of freedom is 99, which we found by subtracting our sample size of 100 by 1. We use the degree
of freedom to calculate the student’s T distribution. The critical value for 90% is 1.65, 95% is
1.96 and 99% is 2.58. We will use these critical values to determine how wide our interval of
confidence will be. The maximal margin of error for 90% is .065, for 95% it is .078, and for 99%
it is .103. We will use the marginal errors with their corresponding levels of confidence to find
the interval that our mean of wingspans will be found in.
The interval for 90% confidence is 4.49 < μ < 4.62 which means there is a 90%
confidence that the average of all housefly wing lengths in mm will be between 4.49 and 4.62
mm. We found this by doing 4.55 - .065 for the lower limit and 4.55 - .065 for the higher limit.
The confidence interval for 95% is 4.47 < μ < 4.63 which means there is a 95% confidence that
the average of all housefly wing lengths will be between 4.47 and 4.63 mm. We found this
interval by doing 4.55 - .078 for the lower limit, and 4.55 - .078 for the higher limit. Finally, the
confidence interval for 99% is 4.45 < μ < 4.65 which means there is a 99% confidence that the
average of all housefly wing lengths will be between 4.45 and 4.65 mm. We found this interval
by doing 4.55 - .103 for the lower limit, and 4.55 - .103 for the higher limit.
If we had σ (the population standard deviation), we would have done a lot differently.
We would use the zc instead of the student’s t-table. We would use a different equation to find
the error and we would use a different equation to find the interval of confidence. If we knew the
population standard deviation, we would have a better understanding of the housefly wingspan
lengths.