173k views
4 votes
Sebastian earned a score of 152 on Exam A that had a mean of 200 and a standarddeviation of 20. He is about to take Exam B that has a mean of 300 and a standarddeviation of 25. How well must Sebastian score on Exam B in order to do equivalentlywell as he did on Exam A? Assume that scores on each exam are normally distributed.

1 Answer

4 votes

We first look at the z-score on Exam A. The z-score can be computed as follows:


\begin{gathered} z=\frac{x-\operatorname{mean}}{\text{standard dev}} \\ z=(152-200)/(20)=-2.4 \end{gathered}

Using the formula for z-score, we derive the equation solving for x to find the score of Sebastian in Exam B, as follows:


\begin{gathered} x-mean=z\cdot\text{standard deviation} \\ x=\operatorname{mean}+z\cdot\text{standard deviation} \end{gathered}

The z-score is already computed above. Also, the mean and standard deviation on Exam B is already given. We can plug it on the derived equation and solve for x, as follows:


\begin{gathered} x=300+(25\cdot-2.4) \\ x=300+(-60)=240 \end{gathered}

Therefore, Sebastian must get a minimum score of 240 so that he can do equivalently as well as he did on Exam A.

Answer: 240 pts on Exam B

User Benoit Larochelle
by
4.8k points