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The Wall Street Journal reported that approximately 25% of the people who are told a product is improved will believe that it is in fact improved. The remaining 75% believe that this is just hype. Suppose a marketing study consists of a random sample of eight people who are given a sales talk about a new, improved product. What is the standard deviation of the number of people who believe that the product is in fact improved

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Answer:

The standard deviation of the number of people who believe that the product is in fact improved is 1.50.

Explanation:

The random variable X can be defined as the number of people who believe that a product is improved when they are told so.

The probability of a person believing that a product is improved is, p = 0.25.

A random sample of n = 8 people who are given a sales talk about a new, improved product are selected.

The event of a person believing that the product is improved is independent of others.

The random variable X follows a Binomial distribution with parameters n = 8 and p = 0.25.

The success is defined as a person believing that a product is improved.

The mean and standard deviation of a Binomial distribution is given by:

μ = n × p

σ = √[n × p × (1 - p)]

Compute the standard deviation as follows:

σ = √[n × p × (1 - p)]

= √[8 × 0.25 × (1 - 0.25)]

= √(2.25)

= 1.50

Thus, the standard deviation of the number of people who believe that the product is in fact improved is 1.50.

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