BBP 112 – Statistics for the Life Sciences
Assignment ( 20 marks)
Question 1. The average systolic blood pressure for 4000 women who were screened for high blood
pressure was found to be 187 mm Hg with a standard deviation of 22. Using Chebyshev’s theorem,
find the minimum percentage of women in this group who have a systolic blood pressure between
143 and 231 mm Hg.
Question 2. The age distribution of a sample of 5000 persons is bell-shaped with a mean of 40 years
and a standard deviation of 12 years. Determine the approximate percentage of people who are 16
to 64 years old.
Question 3. The one-way commuting times from home to work for all employees working at a large
company have a mean of 34 minutes and a standard deviation of 8 minutes. Using Chebyshev’s
theorem, find the minimum percentage of employees at this company who have one-way
commuting times in the following intervals.
i. 14 to 54 minutes ii. 18 to 50 minutes
Question 4. A limousine has eight tires on it. A fleet of such limos was fit with a batch of tires that
mistakenly passed quality testing. The following table lists the probability distribution of the number
of defective tires on this fleet of limos where x represents the number of defective tires on a limo
and P(x) is the corresponding probability.
x 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
P(x) .0454 .1723 .2838 .2669 .1569 .0585 .0139 .0015 .0008
Calculate the mean and standard deviation of this probability distribution. Give a brief interpretation
of the values of the mean and standard deviation.
Question 5. According to a Pew Research Center survey released on May 12, 2019, 22.8% of INDIAN
adults do not have a religious affiliation (Times of India, May 25, 2020). Assume that this result is
true for the current population of INDIAN adults. A sample of 50 INDIAN adults is randomly selected.
Let x be the number of adults in this sample who do not have a religious affiliation. Find the mean
and standard deviation of the binomial probability distribution of x.
Question 6. Let x be a continuous random variable that has a normal distribution with a mean of 80
and a standard deviation of 12. Find the area under the normal distribution curve
(a) from x = 70 to x = 135 (b) to the left of 27
Question 7. A researcher wanted to find the effect of a special diet on systolic blood pressure. She
selected a sample of seven adults and put them on this dietary plan for 3 months. The following
table gives the systolic blood pressures (in mm Hg) of these seven adults before and after the
completion of this plan.
Subject 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Before 210 180 195 220 231 199 224
After 193 186 186 223 220 183 233
(a)Let μd be the mean reduction in the systolic blood pressures due to this special dietary plan for
the population of all adults. Construct a 95% confidence interval for μd. Assume that the population
of paired differences is approximately normally distributed.
(b)Let μd be the mean of the differences between the systolic blood pressures before and after
completing this special dietary plan for the population of all adults. Using a 5% significance level, can
you conclude that the mean of the paired differences μd is different from zero? Assume that the
population of paired differences is approximately normally distributed.
Question 8. Fifteen fourth-grade students were randomly assigned to three groups to experiment
with three different methods of teaching arithmetic. At the end of the semester, the same test was
given to all 15 students. The following table gives the scores of students in the three groups.
Method I Method II Method III
48 55 84
73 85 68
51 70 95
65 69 74
87 90 67
Calculate the value of the test statistic F.
Question 9. A farmer wants to test three brands of weight-gain diets for chickens to determine if the
mean weight gain for each of these brands is the same. He selected 15 chickens and randomly put
each of them on one of these three brands of diet. The following table lists the weights (in Kg)
gained by these chickens after a period of 1 month.
Brand A Brand B Brand C
.8 .6 1.2
1.3 1.3 .8
1.7 .6 .7
.9 .4 1.5
.6 .7 .9
a. At a 1% significance level, can you reject the null hypothesis that the mean weight gain for all
chickens is the same for each of these three diets?
b. If you did not reject the null hypothesis in part a, explain the Type II error that you may have
made in this case. Note that you cannot calculate the probability of committing a Type II error
without additional information.