Normal Distribution.
1. General Hospital's patient account division has compiled data on the age of accounts
receivables. The data collected indicate that the age of the accounts follows a normal
distribution with mean 28 days and standard deviation 8 days.
a. What proportion of the accounts are between 20 and 40 days old? Ans: 0.7745
b. What proportion of the accounts are less than 30 days old? Ans: 0.5987
2. The time required to complete a final examination in a particular college course is normally
distributed, with mean of 80 minutes and a standard deviation of 10 minutes. Answer the
following questions.
a. What is the probability of completing the exam in one hour or less? Ans: 0.0228
b. What is the probability a student will complete the exam in a time between 60 and
75 minutes?
Ans: 0.2857
3. A test is normally distributed with a mean of 40 and a standard deviation of 7. (a) What
score would be needed to be in the 85th percentile? (b) What score would be needed to be in
the 22nd percentile?
Ans: (a) 47.28 (b) 34.61
4. Assume a normal distribution with a mean of 90 and a standard deviation of 7. What
limits would include the middle 65% of the cases. Ans: 83.46 to 96.55
5. The reaction time to a certain psychological experiment is considered to be normally
distributed with a mean of 20 seconds and a standard deviation of 4 seconds.
a. What proportion of subjects take between 15 and 30 seconds to react?
Ans: 0.8882
b. What proportion of subjects take longer than 30 seconds to react? Ans: 0.0062
c. What is the reaction time such that only 10% of subjects are faster? Ans: 14.88
6. Wages for workers in a particular industry average $11.90 per hour with a standard
deviation of 40 cents. The wages are considered to be normally distributed.
i. Suppose you are employed in this industry. What would your wage have to be if
75% of all workers earn more than you? Ans: 11.63
ii. What proportion of workers receive wages less than $11 per hour? Ans: 0.0122
iii. What proportion of workers make between $12 and $13 per hour? Ans: 0.3983
7. The average starting salary for this year's graduates at a large university (LU) is $20,000
with a standard deviation of $8,000. Furthermore, it is known that the starting salaries are
normally distributed.
a. What is the probability that a randomly selected LU graduate will have a starting salary of at least
$30,400? Ans: 0.0968
b. Individuals with starting salaries of less than $15,600 receive a low-income tax break. What
percentage of the graduates will receive the tax break? Ans: 29%
c. What are the minimum and the maximum starting salaries of the middle 95% of the LU graduates?
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d. If 189 of the recent graduates have salaries of at least $32,240, how many students
graduated this year from this university? Ans: 201.7094
e. What is the minimum salary required to be in the top 10%? Ans: 30252.41
8. Daily fluctuations of French CAC-40 stock index from March to June in 1997 seem to
follow a normal distribution with mean of 2600 and a standard deviation of 50. Find the
probability that the CAC-40 will be (i) between 2520 and 2670 (ii) below 2730 and not less
than 2450?
Ans: (i) 0.8644 (ii) 0.9940
9. The mean cost for employee alcohol rehabilitation programs involving hospitalization is
$10,000 ((USA Today, September 12, 1991). Assume that rehabilitation program cost has a
normal distribution with a standard deviation of $2,200
a. What is the probability that a rehabilitation program will cost at least $12,000?
Ans: 0.1814
b. What is the cost range for the 10% most expensive rehabilitation programs?
Ans: ≥ 12816
10. The grade point averages of a large population of cadets in MA206 are approximately
normally distributed with a mean of 2.4 and a standard deviation of 0.8.
a) What fraction of the students will possess a grade point average in excess of 3.0?
Ans: 0.2266
b) If cadets possessing a grade point average equal to or less than 1.9 are dropped from
USMA, what percentage of the cadets will be dropped? Ans: 0.2643
c) What grade point average would you need to be in the 90th percentile? The 45th
percentile?
Ans: 3.424 and 2.296 respectively.
11. The time, in hours, that a copying machine may work without breaking down is a
normally distributed random variable with mean 549 and standard deviation 68. Find the
probability that the machine will work for at least 500 hours without breaking down.
Ans: 0.7642
12. Scores on a management aptitude examination are believed to be normally distributed
with mean 650 (out of a total of 800 possible points) and standard deviation 50. What is
the probability that a randomly chosen manager will achieve a score above 700? What is
the probability that the score will be below 750? Ans: 0.1587 and 0.9772