Final answer:
A confidence interval is constructed to estimate the population mean rating of courses for all college students in the state.
Step-by-step explanation:
A confidence interval is a range of values that is likely to contain the true population parameter. In the case of this study, a confidence interval is constructed to estimate the population mean rating of courses for all college students in the state.
To construct a confidence interval, we need to calculate the mean and standard deviation of the sample ratings. Using the provided data, the mean is 22.74 and the standard deviation is 17.59. With a 98% confidence level, we can use the t-distribution to determine the margin of error.
The confidence interval can be calculated as follows:
Margin of error = t-value * (standard deviation / sqrt(sample size))
t-value for a 98% confidence level with 16 degrees of freedom is approximately 2.583.
Substituting the values into the formula:
Margin of error = 2.583 * (17.59 / sqrt(18)) = 15.39
Therefore, the confidence interval for the population mean rating is approximately (7.35, 38.13).