Transcript

Chapter 14

Example 19

First of all, you should read the opening of the question highlighting any key points. For example
you can see that the mean number of flaws per metre needs to be less than or equal to 0.6, and the
length to be inspected is 7m. The fact that you were given an average per unit length probably
already alerted you to the likelihood of a Poisson distribution, and this is confirmed in the last line of
the opening.

Part a asks you for the distribution of the number of flaws in a length of 7m. Because of the
uniformity assumption of a Poisson this will also be Poisson but with a mean of 7 times 0.6 which is
4.2. Hence the distribution is Po(4.2)

b The null hypothesis for a parameter, the mean number of flaws in this question, is always that it is
equal to an actual value. In this case we have the mean is equal to 4.2 in a 7m length.

It might be tempting, because the question states than their needs to be fewer flaws than this, to
say that the alternative hypothesis is that the mean is less than 4.2. But don’t forget passing the
quality control test is already included in the null hypothesis, so the alternative needs to be that it
fails the test, so it would be the mean number of flaws is greater than 4.2.

c When asked to find a critical region it is sometimes easier to find an acceptance region, the values
for which you will not reject the null hypothesis, and deduce the critical region from there. If the
probability of being in the critical region is to be less than 0.05 then the probability of being in the
acceptance region needs to be greater than 0.95. The upper value for the acceptance region for
discrete data will always be one less than the lower value of the critical region so we can say
P(X≥a)≤0.05 is equivalent to P(X≤a-1)≥0.95

Under the null hypothesis this value can be found using the cumulative Poisson probability function
which will give a-1 as equal to 8 and hence a=9. So the critical region will be X≥9.

When tackling type I and type II error questions it is important to start from the general definitions.
A type I error is the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when it is true, which we can write as

P(reject H0|H0 true) In this case this means P(X  9   4.2) which can be calculated on your GDC
using the Poisson cumulative probability function, to give 0.028

A type II error is the probability of accepting the null hypothesis when it is not true. Which we can
write as P(accept H0|H1 true)

Any question will have to give us an alternative value for the mean if we are to find a type II error. In
this case it tells us that the mean is 0.72 flaws per meter which means in our 7m sample we would
expect there to be 0.72x7 flaws. The type II error probability is therefore P(X  8   5.04) which
can again be done on the GDC using the Poisson cumulative probability function, but this time with a
mean of 5.04. The answer comes to 0.929, so unfortunately our sample is not large enough for us to
have much chance of obtaining the correct result on the test, if the mean is really 0.72.

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