(Fall 2023) STAT 1010 Homework 6 Due: Friday, November 17 at 11:59pm
1. The current age (in years) of 400 clerical employees at an insurance claims processing center is normally
distributed with mean 38 and SD 6. Mark each statement as True or False. If you believe that a
statement is false, briefly say why you think it is false.
(a) (1 point) More employees at the processing center are older than 44 than between 38 and 44.
False, empirical rule.
(b) (1 point) If the company were to convert these ages from years to days, then the ages in days would
also be normally distributed.
True
2. The number of packages handled by a freight carrier daily is normally distributed. On average, 8,000
packages are shipped each day, with standard deviation 600. Assume the package counts are independent
from one day to the next. Mark each statement as True or False. If you believe that a statement is false,
briefly say why you think it is false.
(a) (1 point) The total number of packages shipped over five days is normally distributed.
True
(b) (1 point) The difference between the number of packages shipped today and the number shipped
tomorrow is zero.
False that would be true if the question said the expected number of packages but obviously if its a
distribution that doesn't have to be the case.
(Fall 2023) STAT 1010 Homework 6 Due: Friday, November 17 at 11:59pm
3. Mark each statement as True or False. If you believe that a statement is false, briefly say why you think
it is false.
(a) (1 point) Every member of the population is equally likely to be in a simple random sample.
True
(b) (1 point) Bias due to the wording of questions causes different samples to present different impres-
sions of the population.
True
(c) (1 point) The sampling frame is a list of every person who appears in a sample, including those
who did not respond to questions.
True
4. The manager of a warehouse monitors the volume of shipments made by the delivery team. The auto-
mated tracking system tracks every package as it moves through the facility. A sample of 25 packages is
selected and weighed every day. On the basis of contracts with customers, the mean weight should be
µ = 22 pounds with standard deviation σ = 5 pounds. Mark each statement as True or False. If you
believe that a statement is false, briefly say why you think it is false.
(a) (1 point) A sampling distribution describes the variability among average weights from day to day.
False not necessarily from day to day.
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(Fall 2023) STAT 1010 Homework 6 Due: Friday, November 17 at 11:59pm
(b) (1 point) A Type I error occurs if the mean weight µ and standard deviation σ do not change.
False, a type one error would occur if the manager stopped shipping incorrectly due to a CI test.
(c) (1 point) To have a small chance for a Type II error, the manager of the warehouse should locate
the control limits in the X-bar chart at 22 ± 3 pounds.
Type I is a false positive and Type II is a false negative.
True
5. (2 points) How large can a single observation from a normal distribution be?
As large as you would like.
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(Fall 2023) STAT 1010 Homework 6 Due: Friday, November 17 at 11:59pm
6. (2 points) Which one of the following normal quantile plots indicates that the data?
(a) Are nearly normal?
(b) Have a bimodal distribution? (One way to recognize a bimodal shape is a gap in the spacing of
adjacent data values.)
(c) Are skewed?
(d) Have outliers to both sides of the center?
a) III
b) II
c) I
d) IV
7. (2 points) The weekly salary paid to employees of a small company that supplies part-time laborers
averages $700 with a standard deviation of $400.
(a) If the weekly salaries are normally distributed, estimate the fraction of employees that make more
than $300 per week.
0.84
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(Fall 2023) STAT 1010 Homework 6 Due: Friday, November 17 at 11:59pm
(b) If every employee receives a year-end bonus that adds $100 to the paycheck in the final week, how
does this change the normal model for that week?
increases mean by 100, std stays the same.
(c) If every employee receives a 5% salary increase for the next year, how does the normal model
change?
Y = 1.05X, so mean would increase by a factor of 1.05 and std would do the same. Shifted to the
right and slightly wider looking.
(d) If the lowest salary is $300 and the median salary is $500, does a normal model appear appropriate?
No
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(Fall 2023) STAT 1010 Homework 6 Due: Friday, November 17 at 11:59pm
8. (2 points) A contractor built 30 similar homes in a suburban development. The homes have comparable
size and amenities, but each has been sold with features that customize the appearance, landscape, and
interior. The contractor expects the homes to sell for about $450,000. He expects that one-third of the
homes will sell either for less than $400,000 or more than $500,000.
(a) Would a normal model be appropriate to describe the distribution of sale prices?
Yes
(b) What data would help you decide if a normal model is appropriate? (You cannot use the prices of
these 30 homes; the model is to describe the prices of as-yet-unsold homes.)
The median
(c) What normal model has properties that are consistent with the intuition of the contractor?
Bimodal
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(Fall 2023) STAT 1010 Homework 6 Due: Friday, November 17 at 11:59pm
9. (2 points) A bank with branches in a large metropolitan area is considering opening its offices on Satur-
day, but it is uncertain whether customers will prefer (1) having walk-in hours on Saturday or (2) having
extended branch hours during the week. Listed below are some of the ideas proposed for gathering data.
For each, indicate what kind of sampling strategy is involved and what (if any) biases might result.
(a) Put a big ad in the newspaper asking people to log their opinions on the bank’s Web site.
Simple random sampling. Representation bias.
(b) Randomly select one of the branches and contact every customer at that bank by phone.
Cluster sampling. Representation bias.
(c) Send a survey to every customer’s home, and ask the customers to fill it out and return it.
Simple random sampling. No bias as random.
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(Fall 2023) STAT 1010 Homework 6 Due: Friday, November 17 at 11:59pm
(d) Randomly select 20 customers from each branch. Send each a survey, and follow up with a phone
call if he or she does not return the survey within a week.
Cluster sampling. No bias or little bias.
10. (2 points) Between quarterly audits, a company checks its accounting procedures to detect problems
before they become serious. The accounting staff processes payments on about 120 orders each day. The
next day a supervisor checks 10 of the transactions to be sure they were processed properly.
(a) Propose a sampling strategy for the supervisor.
Simple random. List the orders from 1-120. Use a random number generator to select 10 orders
and check those.
(b) How would you modify the sampling strategy if the company makes both wholesale and retail sales
that require different bookkeeping procedures?
Cluster them.
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(Fall 2023) STAT 1010 Homework 6 Due: Friday, November 17 at 11:59pm
11. (2 points) Print a blank 50 × 15 spreadsheet on construction paper, and then cut the printed cells into
25 rectangles of varying size, some with just a few cells and some with many. Ask a few friends to pick
a sample of 5 pieces from these. (One at a time, and don’t let them see what the others do, so that the
samples are independently selected.) For each sample, find the average size of the 5 pieces.
(a) What is the population mean size?
30
(b) Are the sample averages close to the population mean?
Yes the sample averages are an unbiased estimator.
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(Fall 2023) STAT 1010 Homework 6 Due: Friday, November 17 at 11:59pm
12. (2 points) Rather than stop the production when a mean crosses the control limits in the X-bar chart,
a manager has decided to wait until two consecutive
√ means lie outside the control limits before stopping
the process. The control limits are at µ ± 2σ n.
(a) By waiting for two consecutive sample means to lie outside the control limits, has the manager
increased or decreased the chance for a Type I error?
Decreased.
(b) What is the probability of a Type I error if this procedure is used?
0.05^2
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(Fall 2023) STAT 1010 Homework 6 Due: Friday, November 17 at 11:59pm
13. (2 points) Which of the following processes would you expect to be under control, and which would you
expect not to be under control? Explain briefly why or why not.
(a) Daily sales at each checkout line in a supermarket.
Under control, large volume not conforms to the mean.
(b) Number of weekday calls to a telephone help line.
Under control, large volume.
(c) Monthly volume of shipments of video game software.
Not under control, more demand near release.
(d) Dollar value of profits of a new startup company.
Not under control, depends on various aspects.
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(Fall 2023) STAT 1010 Homework 6 Due: Friday, November 17 at 11:59pm
14. (2 points) A monitoring system records the production of an assembly line each hour. The design calls
for output to be four units per hour. Current policy calls for stopping the line to check for flaws if fewer
than two items are produced in an hour.
(a) What random variable seems suited to modeling the number of items produced each hour? What
assumptions would you need to verify?
A poisson random variable X which measures the number of items produced per hour.
(b) What is the chance of a Type I error in this procedure? Use the random variable chosen in part
(a).
False positive means shuts down when not supposed to.
P(X<2) = P(X=1) + P(X=0) = 0.0916
(c) What is the chance of a Type II error in this procedure if production falls to three units per hour?
False negative.
P(X > 2) = 0.762
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