Question

At Western University the historical mean of scholarship examination scores for freshman applications is 900. A historical population standard deviation σ= 180 is assumed known.Each year, the assistant dean uses a sample of applications to determine whether the mean examination score for the new freshman applications has changed.

a. State the hypotheses.
b. What is the 95% confidence interval estimate of the population mean examination
score if a sample of 200 applications provided a sample mean x¯¯¯= 935?
c. Use the confidence interval to conduct a hypothesis test. Using α= .05, what is your
conclusion?
d. What is the p-value?

Answer 1

a) Null Hypothesis:
`\mu =900`

Alternative hypothesis:
`\mu \\eq 900`

b) The 95% confidence interval would be given by (910.05;959.95)

c) Since we confidence interval not ocntains the value of 900 we fail to reject the null hypothesis that the true mean is 900.

d)
`z=(935 -900)/((180)/(√(200)))=2.750`

Since is a bilateral test the p value is given by:

`p_v =2*P(Z>2.750)=0.0059`

Explanation:

a. State the hypotheses.

On this case we want to check the following system of hypothesis:

Null Hypothesis:
`\mu =900`

Alternative hypothesis:
`\mu \\eq 900`

b. What is the 95% confidence interval estimate of the population mean examination score if a sample of 200 applications provided a sample mean x¯¯¯= 935?

A confidence interval is "a range of values that’s likely to include a population value with a certain degree of confidence. It is often expressed a % whereby a population means lies between an upper and lower interval".

The margin of error is the range of values below and above the sample statistic in a confidence interval.

Normal distribution, is a "probability distribution that is symmetric about the mean, showing that data near the mean are more frequent in occurrence than data far from the mean".

`\bar X=935` represent the sample mean for the sample

`\mu` population mean (variable of interest)

`\sigma=180` represent the population standard deviation

n=200 represent the sample size

The confidence interval for the mean is given by the following formula:

`\bar X \pm z_(\alpha/2)(\sigma)/(√(n))` (1)

In order to calculate the mean and the sample deviation we can use the following formulas:

`\bar X= \sum_(i=1)^n (x_i)/(n)` (2)

`s=\sqrt{(\sum_(i=1)^n (x_i-\bar X))/(n-1)}` (3)

The mean calculated for this case is
`\bar X=3278.222`

The sample deviation calculated
`s=97.054`

Since the Confidence is 0.95 or 95%, the value of
`\alpha=0.05` and
`\alpha/2 =0.025`, and we can use excel, a calculator or a table to find the critical value. The excel command would be: "=-NORM.INV(0.025,0,1)".And we see that
`z_(\alpha/2)=1.96`

Now we have everything in order to replace into formula (1):

`935-1.96(180)/(√(200))=910.05`

`935+1.96(180)/(√(200))=959.95`

So on this case the 95% confidence interval would be given by (910.05;959.95)

c. Use the confidence interval to conduct a hypothesis test. Using α= .05, what is your conclusion?

Since we confidence interval not ocntains the value of 900 we fail to reject the null hypothesis that the true mean is 900.

d. What is the p-value?

The statistic is given by:

`z=(\bar X -\mu)/((\sigma)/(√(n)))`

If we replace we got:

`z=(935 -900)/((180)/(√(200)))=2.750`

Since is a bilateral test the p value is given by:

`p_v =2*P(Z>2.750)=0.0059`

So then since the p value is less than the significance we can reject the null hypothesis at 5% of significance.