1.
Able to sketch and explain the standard normal distribution
Questions:
1. What is the total area under the standard normal curve?
2. What are the mean and standard deviation of the standard normal distribution?
3. In a standard normal distribution, what is P(Z > 0)?
4. According to the Empirical Rule, what percentage of data falls between Z = -2 and Z
= 2?
5. If P(Z < a) = 0.25, is the Z-score *a* positive or negative? Explain.
6. In your own words, what does a Z-score of -2.5 represent?
7. Is the standard normal distribution skewed? Explain.
8. What is the value of the mode of the standard normal distribution?
9. How does the standard normal distribution relate to other normal distributions?
2. Able to solve problems according to the standard normal distribution
Questions:
Let Z be a standard normal random variable. Use the Z-table to find:
1. P(Z < 1.28)
2. P(Z > -0.75)
3. P(-1.2 < Z < 0.8)
4. Find the Z-score for which the area to the right is 0.10.
5. The systolic blood pressure for a group of people is normally distributed with a mean
of 120 and a standard deviation of 10. What is the probability a randomly selected
person has a pressure below 115?
6. For the distribution in Q5, what is the probability a person has a pressure between 110
and 130?
7. The 90th percentile for a normal distribution with μ=50 and σ=5 is what value?
8. Find the value of *c* such that P(-c < Z < c) = 0.6826.
9. If P(Z < k) = 0.85, what is the value of k?
10. Scores on a test are N(75, 8). What is the minimum score needed to be in the top
15%?
3. Able to calculate sampling distributions of sample means
Questions:
1. Basic Parameters
A population has a mean μ = 80 and a standard deviation σ = 12. A random sample of size n =
36 is selected. What is the mean and standard deviation (standard error) of the sampling
distribution of the sample mean?
2. Probability Calculation (CLT)
The weights of apples are known to have a mean of 150 grams and a standard deviation of 25
grams. If a random sample of 50 apples is selected, what is the probability that the sample's
mean weight is greater than 155 grams?
3. Finding a Sample Mean Probability
Scores on a test are normally distributed with a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100.
What is the probability that a random sample of 25 students will have a mean score of less
than 480?
4. Finding a Percentile
The lifetime of a certain type of lightbulb has a mean of 1000 hours and a standard deviation
of 200 hours. In a random sample of 64 bulbs, what is the 90th percentile for the sample
mean lifetime? (What average lifetime will only 10% of samples exceed?)
5. Probability with Finite Population
A small company has 5 employees. Their salaries are: $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $60,000,
and $70,000. You take a simple random sample of 2 employees without replacement.
a) Find the mean (μ) and standard deviation (σ) of the population.
b) List all possible samples of size n=2 and find the mean of each.
c) Construct the sampling distribution of the sample mean and verify that its mean is μ and its
standard error is
√
σ N −n
√ n N −1
.
6. Applying the Central Limit Theorem
An electronics company claims the battery life for a product is skewed with a mean of 60
hours and a standard deviation of 20 hours. What is the probability that in a sample of 100
products, the sample mean battery life is between 58 and 62 hours?
7. Finding Sample Size
You want to estimate the average height of students. The population standard deviation is
believed to be 5 inches. How large must your sample be so that the standard error of the
sample mean is less than 0.5 inches?
8. Comparing Probabilities (Individual vs. Sample)
The cholesterol level in a population has a mean of 200 mg/dL with a standard deviation of
40 mg/dL.
a) What is the probability that one randomly selected individual has a cholesterol level above
210 mg/dL?
b) What is the probability that a random sample of 25 individuals has a mean cholesterol
level above 210 mg/dL?
c) Explain the difference in your answers.
9. Finding an Interval
A process fills bottles with a mean volume of 1.0 liter and a standard deviation of 0.02 liters.
If a sample of 16 bottles is randomly selected, between what two values will the middle 95%
of sample means lie?
10. Reverse Calculation (Finding Population Mean)
The sampling distribution of the mean for samples of size n=49 has a standard error of 1.4. If
P( x > 205) = 0.05, what is the population mean μ? (Hint: Find the Z-score corresponding to
the 95th percentile first).
4. Able to demonstrate and solve problems with the central limit theorem
Questions:
A population has a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. You take a random sample of
size n=36.
1. What is the mean of the sampling distribution of x ?
2. What is the standard error of the sampling distribution of x ?
3. What is the shape of the sampling distribution of x ? Justify your answer.
4. Find P( x < 98).
5. Find P( x >103).
6. Find P(97 < x <102).
7. Would the shape of the sampling distribution change if the population was highly
skewed? Why/why not?
8. If the sample size was increased to n=64, what would happen to the standard error?
9. For n=36, between what two values would the middle 95% of sample means fall?
10. If the population was normally distributed, would the CLT still apply? Explain.
5. Able to interpret data based on sampling distribution and CLT
Questions:
1. A poll of 400 voters shows 55% support a candidate. The standard error is 2.5%. How
can the CLT justify creating a confidence interval?
2. Why is the mean from a large sample often a better estimate of the population mean
than one from a small sample?
3. If you calculate a 95% confidence interval for a mean based on a sample of n=40,
interpret what "95% confidence" means in terms of the sampling distribution.
4. A factory fills bottles. The population mean is 500ml, σ=2ml. A sample of 50 bottles
has a mean of 499.5ml. Is this surprising? Explain using the standard error.
5. In hypothesis testing, the p-value is calculated using a sampling distribution. Why?
6. What does a large standard error imply about the precision of your sample mean as an
estimate?
7. If you flip a fair coin 100 times, the distribution of the number of heads is binomial.
Can you use a normal distribution to approximate the probability of getting between
40 and 60 heads? Justify.
8. If you take many samples and build a confidence interval from each, what does the
CLT tell us about the percentage of these intervals that will contain the true mean?
9. A researcher finds a sampling distribution that is skewed even though n=40. Is this a
violation of the CLT? Explain.
10. How does the CLT empower data scientists working with large datasets from
unknown distributions?
6. Able to demonstrate normal as approximation to binomial
Questions:
A coin is flipped 200 times. The probability of heads is 0.5.
1. Check if the normal approximation is appropriate.
2. What are the mean (μ) and standard deviation (σ) of the approximating normal
distribution?
3. Approximate the probability of getting exactly 100 heads. (Use continuity correction).
4. Approximate the probability of getting more than 110 heads.
5. Approximate the probability of getting between 90 and 105 heads (inclusive).
6. Why is a continuity correction necessary?
7. If the probability of success was 0.01 and n=500, would the normal approximation be
appropriate?
8. For a binomial distribution with n=100 and p=0.2, find P(X ≤ 25) using the normal
approximation.
9. Without continuity correction, would the probability in Q3 be zero? Why?
10. A factory has a 5% defect rate. In a shipment of 500 items, what is the probability that
less than 30 are defective?