College of Technology

Department of Construction Management

Statistical Modeling and Optimization
CNST 6397
Spring 2016
HW #4
Due on Thursday September 17, 2015

Problem#1
Shear strength measurements for spot welds of a certain type have been found to be have a standard
deviation of approximately 10 psi. If 100 test welds are to be measured, find the approximate
probability that the sample means will be within 1 psi of the true population mean.

Problem#2
If shear-strength measurements have a standard deviation of 10 psi, how many test welds should
be used in the sample if the sample mean is to be 1 psi of the population mean with probability
approximately 0.95?
Problem#3
One-hour carbon monoxide concentrations in air samples from a large city average 12 ppm, with
a standard deviation of 9 ppm. Find the probability that the average concentration in 100 samples
selected randomly will exceed 14 ppm.

Problem#4
Shear strength measurements for spot welds of a certain type have been found to be have an
approximate normal distribution with a standard deviation of 10 psi. If 10 test welds are to be
measured, find the approximate probability that the sample means will be within 1 psi of the true
population mean.

Problem#5
The downtime per day for a certain computing facility has averaged 4.0 hours for the last year.
The standard deviation of downtimes of the last 20 failures is 0.8 hours.
1. Find the probability that the average daily downtime for a period of 20 days is between 1
and 5 hours.
2. Find the probability that the total downtime for the 30 days is less than 115 hours.
3. What assumptions are necessary for the answers in parts (a) and (b) to be valid
approximations?