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A business journal reports that the probability that Internet users in the United States will use a mobile payment app is 0. 60. The journal claims this indicates that out of 5 randomly selected Internet users, 3 will use the mobile payment app. Is this business journal interpreting the probability correctly?

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Answer:

Step-by-step explanation:

No, the business journal is not interpreting the probability correctly.

The probability of an event occurring is a value between 0 and 1, where 0 represents an impossible event and 1 represents a certain event. In this case, the business journal is reporting that the probability of an Internet user in the United States using a mobile payment app is 0.60, which means that there is a 60% chance that a randomly selected Internet user will use the mobile payment app.

However, when the journal claims that out of 5 randomly selected Internet users, 3 will use the mobile payment app, they are interpreting the probability as a number of successes in a certain number of trials. The probability of 0.60 cannot be directly converted into the number of expected successes in a fixed number of trials without additional information.

In order to calculate the expected number of Internet users out of 5 who will use the mobile payment app, you would use the formula for expected value of a binomial distribution, which is n * p, where n is the number of trials and p is the probability of success. In this case, n is 5 and p is 0.60. So, expected value of number of internet users out of 5 using the app is 5 * 0.60 = 3 which is what the journal is claiming.

Therefore, The journal's interpretation of probability is in the right direction but is not a directly convertable quantity.

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