Final answer:
The standard deviation of W, representing the total weight of a company's shipped gift baskets containing apples and pears, is found by adding the variances of the independent weights and then taking the square root of this sum.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question revolves around the concept of standard deviation and how it is used to describe the spread of a normal distribution in statistics. In a scenario where a company ships gift baskets containing apples and pears, and we are given that the weights of apples, pears, and baskets are normally distributed with known means and standard deviations, the goal is to find the standard deviation of the total weight W, where W represents the sum of the weights of the apples, pears, and basket.
To find the standard deviation of W, we use the fact that if two independent random variables are normally distributed, then the variance of their sum is equal to the sum of their variances. So, we would calculate the variance of the total weight by adding the variances of the weights of the apples, pears, and basket, and then take the square root of that sum to find the standard deviation of W. Since the actual values are not provided in the question, we cannot give a numerical answer, but this explanation should help understand the process involved.