NEU - PROBABILITY & STAITSTICS – TUTORIAL PAPER

TUTORIAL 7. SAMPLING DISTRIBUTION

QUESTIONS
1. The average labor cost for car repairs for a large chain of car repair shops is $48.25. The
standard deviation is $4.20. Assume the variable is normally distributed.
(a) If a shop is selected at random, find the probability that the labor cost will range between
$46 and $48.
(b) If 20 shops are selected at random, find the probability that the mean of the sample will be
between $46 and $48.
(c) Which answer is larger? Explain why.

2. A theater owner has found that 5% of patrons do not show up for the performance that they
purchased tickets for. If the theater has 100 seats, find the probability that six or more patrons
will not show up for the sold-out performance.
3. According to recent surveys, 53% of households have personal computers. If a random sample
of 175 households is selected, what is the probability that more than 75 but fewer than 110
have a personal computer?

MULTIPLE CHOICE
4. Sampling distributions describe the distribution of
A. parameters.
B. statistics.
C. both parameters and statistics.
D. neither parameters nor statistics.
5. The standard error of the mean
A. is never larger than the standard deviation of the population.
B. decreases as the sample size increases.
C. measures the variability of the mean from sample to sample.
D. All of the above.
6. Which of the following statements about the sampling distribution of the sample mean is
incorrect?
A. The sampling distribution of the sample mean is approximately normal whenever the
sample size is sufficiently large ( n  30).
B. The sampling distribution of the sample mean is generated by repeatedly taking
samples of size n and computing the sample means.
C. The mean of the sampling distribution of the sample mean is equal to  .
D. The standard deviation of the sampling distribution of the sample mean is equal to  .
7. Which of the following is true about the sampling distribution of the sample mean?
A. The mean of the sampling distribution is always  .
B. The standard deviation of the sampling distribution is always  .
C. The shape of the sampling distribution is always approximately normal.
D. All of the above are true.

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NEU - PROBABILITY & STAITSTICS – TUTORIAL PAPER
8. Suppose the ages of students in Statistics 101 follow a skewed-right distribution with a mean
of 23 years and a standard deviation of 3 years. If we randomly sampled 100 students, which
of the following statements about the sampling distribution of the sample mean age is
incorrect?
A. The mean of the sampling distribution is equal to 23 years.
B. The standard deviation of the sampling distribution is equal to 3 years.
C. The shape of the sampling distribution is approximately normal.
D. The standard error of the sampling distribution is equal to 0.3 years.
9. Major league baseball salaries averaged $1.5 million with a standard deviation of $0.8 million
in 1994. Suppose a sample of 100 major league players was taken. Find the approximate
probability that the average salary of the 100 players exceeded $1 million.
A. Approximately 0
B. 0.2357
C. 0.7357
D. Approximately 1
10. For sample size 16, the sampling distribution of the mean will be approximately normally
distributed
A. regardless of the shape of the population.
B. if the shape of the population is symmetrical.
C. if the sample standard deviation is known.
D. if the population is normally distributed.
11. The standard error of the mean for a sample of 100 is 30. In order to cut the standard error of
the mean to 15, we would
A. increase the sample size to 200.
B. increase the sample size to 400.
C. decrease the sample size to 50.
D. decrease the sample to 25.
12. The standard error of the population proportion will become larger
A. as population proportion approaches 0.
B. as population proportion approaches 0.50.
C. as population proportion approaches 1.00.
D. as the sample size increases.

TRUE / FALSE
13. True or False: A sampling distribution is a distribution for a statistic.
14. True or False: As the sample size increases, the standard error of the mean increases.
15. True or False: As the sample size increases, the effect of an extreme value on the sample mean
becomes smaller.
16. True or False: The standard error of the sampling distribution of a sample proportion is
√𝑝̅ (1 − 𝑝̅ )/𝑛 where 𝑝̅ is the sample proportion
17. True or False: If a simple random sample is chosen with replacement, each individual has the
same chance of selection on every draw.

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