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A hospital director believes that over 30% of the lab reports contain errors and feels an audit is required. A sample of 250 reports found 85 errors. Is there sufficient evidence at the 0.05 level to substantiate the hospital director's claim? a) Yes, there is sufficient evidence to substantiate the claim. b) No, there is not sufficient evidence to substantiate the claim.

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Final answer:

Based on the sample of 250 lab reports with 85 errors, hypothesis testing at a 0.05 significance level indicates sufficient evidence to support the hospital director's claim that over 30% of the reports contain errors, as the p-value is less than 0.05, leading to rejection of the null hypothesis.

Step-by-step explanation:

The student's question revolves around testing a statistical claim using hypothesis testing.

To determine whether the hospital director's belief that more than 30% of lab reports contain errors is substantiated, one would use a one-sample z-test for proportions. Here's how the hypothesis test is set up:

  • The null hypothesis (H0) would state that the proportion of errors in lab reports is 30% or less.
  • The alternative hypothesis (H1) would claim that the proportion of errors is greater than 30%.

Given a sample size of 250 reports with 85 errors, the sample proportion is 85/250 = 0.34.

At a significance level of alpha: 0.05,

we perform the test to see if this provides enough statistical evidence to reject the null hypothesis.

If the calculated p-value is less than 0.05, the decision will be to reject the null hypothesis, which means there is sufficient evidence at the 5 percent significance level to suggest that the proportion of errors in the lab reports is indeed greater than 30%.

In this case, the student's hypothetical results indicate that the p-value is less than 0.05, hence, the conclusion is that there's sufficient evidence to support the hospital director's claim.

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