MC221: Mathematical Statistics
Tutorial 6: Interval Estimation
1. Let the observed mean of a sample of size 45 be x̄ = 68.51 from a distribution having variance 110. Find
a 95% confidence interval for the true mean µ and interpret the result and state any assumptions you
have made.
2. In a large university, the following are the ages of 20 randomly chosen employees:
24 31 28 43 28 56 48 39 52 32
38 49 51 49 62 33 41 58 63 56
Assuming that the data come from a normal population, construct a 95% confidence interval for the
population mean µ of the ages of the employees of this university. Interpret your answer.
xi = 234 and x2i = 3048.
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3. A random sample of 20 observations gave the following summary statistics:
Assuming that the data may be looked upon as a random sample from a normal population, construct
a 95% confidence interval for the actual average, µ.
4. In a random sample of 50 college seniors, 18 indicated that they were planning to pursue a graduate
degree. Find a 98% confidence interval for the true proportion of all college seniors planning to pursue
a graduate degree, and interpret the result, and state any assumptions you have made.
5. The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster normally has a gray color. However, because of mutation a good
portion of them are black. A biologist eager to learn about the effect of mutation wants to collect a
random sample to estimate the proportion of black fruit flies of this type within 1% error with 95%
confidence.
(a) How many individual flies should the researcher capture if there is no information on the population
proportion of black flies?
(b) Suppose the researcher has the initial estimate that 25% of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster
have been affected by this mutation. What is the sample size?
xi = 234 and x2i = 3048.
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6. A random sample of 25 observations gave the following summary statistics:
Assuming that the data can be looked upon as a random sample from a normal population, construct a
95% confidence interval for the actual variance, σ 2 .
7. Suppose we want to study contaminated fish in a river. It is important for the study to know the size of
the variance σ 2 in the fish weights. The 25 samples of fish in the study produced the following summary
statistics: x̄ = 1030.5 g, and the standard deviation s = 200.6 g. Construct a 95% confidence interval
for the true variation in weights of contaminated fish in this river.
8. The following information is obtained from two independent samples selected from two populations.
n1 = 40 x̄1 = 28.4 s1 = 4.1
n2 = 32 x̄2 = 25.6 s2 = 4.5
(a) What is the maximum likelihood estimator of µ1 − µ2 ?
(b) Construct a 99% confidence interval for µ1 − µ2 .
9. The following information was obtained from two independent samples selected from two normally
distributed populations with unknown but equal variances.
Sample 1: 14 15 12 13 6 14 11 12 17 19 23
Sample 2: 16 18 12 20 15 19 15 22 20 18 23 12 20
Construct a 95% confidence interval for the difference between the population means and interpret.
10. Let the random variables X1 and X2 follow binomial distributions that have parameters n1 = 100,
n2 = 75. Let x1 = 35 and x2 = 27 be observed values of X1 and X2 . Let p1 and p2 be the true
proportions. Determine an appropriate 95% confidence interval for p1 − p2 .
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