Question

A public health researcher wishes to study the dietary behavior of residents in Durham County. The researcher randomly contacts 35 county residents and collects data on their daily sugar intake and obtained a sample average of 37.4 grams sugar per day and a sample standard deviation of 4.2 grams per day. The researcher would like to construct a 99% confidence interval for the mean daily sugar intake of residents in the county using the data. Which distribution should the researcher use when analyzing these data?

Answer 1

Answer: The researcher should use a t-distribution because they do not know the true standard deviation of daily sugar intake in Durham county

Explanation:

Given data:

No of county residents contacted = 35

Sample average = 37.4grams

Standard deviation = 4.2.

Confidence interval.

From the given data above it is obvious that the research doesn’t know the true data for standard deviation of the daily intake of sugar in Durham. And as such the best distribution method that can be employed by the researcher to solve this problem would be the T-distribution.