Tutorial for Lecture 12 (week 13)

n
1
1. Sample mean: X = n ∑ Xi
i =1

2. Central limit theorem for sample mean: The sampling distribution of the sample mean
X is approximately normal irrespective of the shape of the population distribution. In
short,
σ
X ∼ N (µ, ( √ )2 )
n

3. Sample variance:
n n
1 1
s2 = ∑
n − 1 i =1
( x i − X )2 = ∑ ( x 2 − ( X )2 )
n − 1 i =1 i

4. The (1 − α)100% confidence interval (CI) for µ:

(a) CI when σ2 is known: X ± Z α √σ

n
2

(b) CI when σ2 is unknown: X ± tα/2,n−1 √sn

1. A random sample of 10 American college students reported sleeping 7, 6, 8, 4, 2, 7, 6, 7, 6, 5

hours, respectively. What is the sample mean? What is the sample standard deviation?

2. Suppose the average revenue per day is 69 thousand dollars with a standard deviation 3.2
thousand dollars. Estimate the probability that the average revenue for 10 days will be
within 2 thousand dollars of the population mean µ.

3. Assuming that the cost on house per week is normally distributed with µ=100 USD and σ=
15 USD.

(a) Suppose you take a sample of 25 families, and measure their spending on house per
week, what is the probability that your sample’s cost will be 105 or greater?
(b) Suppose you take a sample of 64 families, and measure their spending on house per
week, what is the probability that your sample’s cost will be 105 or greater?

4. Suppose a large class in statistics has mean mark 72 with a standard deviation of 9. Find the
probability that ten students drawn at random will have mean mark over 80.

5. MATH scores of PolyU applicants follow a normal distribution with unknown mean µ and
known standard deviation 9. A sample of 36 MATH scores of applicants produces a sample
mean of 70. Calculate both a 95% and 90% confidence interval for the true population mean
µ.

6. The president of a large university wishes to estimate the average age of the students
presently enrolled. From past studies, the variance is known to be 4 years2 . A sample of
50 students is selected, and the mean is found to be 23.2 years. Find the 95% confidence
interval of the population mean.

7. A sample of size 15 is taken from a large population which is normally distributed; the
sample mean is calculated as 12 and the sample variance as 25. What is the 95% confidence
interval for the population mean µ? How about the 99% confidence interval?

1
 Tutorial for Lecture 12 (week 13)

8. In a class survey, students are asked how many hours they sleep per night. In the sample of
22 students, the mean was 5.77 hours with a standard deviation of 1.572 hours.

(a) Construct a 95% confidence interval for the mean number of hours slept per night in
the population from which this sample was drawn.
(b) What if we wanted to be more conservative and construct a 99% confidence interval?