Final answer:
To find the probability that a randomly selected value is less than 217.6, calculate the z-score and look up the area under the normal curve. The probability is approximately 0.9890. For the interval containing the middle-most 32% of scores, use z-scores corresponding to the lower and upper quartiles.
Step-by-step explanation:
To find the probability that a randomly selected value is less than 217.6, we need to calculate the z-score for that value and then look up the corresponding area under the normal curve.
The formula to calculate the z-score is: z = (x - mean) / standard deviation
In this case, the mean is 165.4 and the standard deviation is 22.7. So, the z-score is: z = (217.6 - 165.4) / 22.7 = 2.3
Using a z-table or a calculator, we can find that the area to the left of a z-score of 2.3 is approximately 0.9890. Therefore, the probability that a randomly selected value is less than 217.6 is approximately 0.9890.
To find the interval containing the middle-most 32% of scores, we need to find the z-scores that correspond to the lower and upper percentiles.
Since the distribution is normal, we can use a z-table to find the z-scores. The z-score that corresponds to the lower quartile (16th percentile) is approximately -0.9944, and the z-score that corresponds to the upper quartile (84th percentile) is approximately 0.9944.
Therefore, the interval containing the middle-most 32% of scores is approximately [-0.9944, 0.9944].