STA 408

Statistics for Sciences and Engineering

Question 1 (20 marks)
a)

The average number of calls for service received by a machine repair department per 10-hour
shift is 12. What is the probability that less than 28 calls will be received during a randomly
selected 25-hour shift?
(4 marks)

b)

A university provides the staff with desktop computers. The supplier obtains the computers from
a manufacturer with a record of producing 3% defective computers.

c)

i)

If a random sample of 50 computers were inspected, what is the probability that there will
be between 2 to 6 (exclusive) defective computers?
(4 marks)

ii)

If a random sample of 700 computers were inspected, what is the probability that there will
at most 25 defective computers? Use Poisson approximation.
(4 marks)

The weights, of 10-year-old girls are known to be normally distributed with a mean of 32
kilograms and a standard deviation of 5.9 kilograms.
i)

Find the value of if ( < ) = 0.25 .

(3 marks)

ii)

A random sample of forty 10-year-old girls was selected, find the probability that the mean
weight of these girls is between 30 and 33 kilograms.
(5 marks)

Question 2 (22 marks)

A company receives a large shipment of bolts to be used in an application from two suppliers, A and B.
The application requires the bolts to have a torque of 100 J in order to break each of them. Before
accepting a shipment, a quality engineer will sample 13 bolts and measure the torque needed to break
each of them.
a)

If the 13 torque values from supplier A are

107 109 111

111

113 113 113 114 114 114 115 117 119

Compute the sample mean and sample standard deviation.

(4 marks)
b)

Construct a 95% confidence interval for the mean torque value for the bolts from supplier A.
Interpret this interval. Do the bolts from supplier A meet the requirement needed for the
application?
(6 marks)

c)

A sample of 13 bolts from supplier B had a mean breaking torque of 109.6 J and standard
deviation 2.8241 J.
i)

Construct a 95% confidence interval for the ratio of variances for the breaking torque
supplied by the two suppliers? What can you conclude from this interval?
(5 marks)

ii)

Based on your results in (i), construct a 95% confidence interval for the difference in the
mean breaking torque between supplier A and supplier B. Based on this interval, can we
conclude that the mean breaking torque of the bolts from supplier A is higher than that of
supplier B? Explain your answer.
(7 marks)

Question 3 (8 marks)
a)

b)

Determine if each of the following statement is TRUE or FALSE.

(i)

The three properties of a good estimator is unbiased, consistent and relatively efficient.

(ii)

The distribution should be used to find a confidence interval for the mean when the
population standard deviation is known.

(iii)

Chi-square distribution is used when computing the confidence intervals for variances and
standard deviations.
(3 marks)

Many participants of a baking class were having problems in baking the required cake within the
time frame. A professional chef volunteered to conduct a private baking class in order to help the
participants. The following table shows the time in minutes taken by five participants to bake a
cake before and after attending the private baking class.

Before
After

15
10

Time taken (in minutes) in baking a cake

18
18
13
16
19
13

14
11

Construct a 98% confidence interval for the difference in the mean time taken by the participants
to bake a cake before and after attending the private class. Based on this interval can we
conclude that attending the private class decreases the time taken to bake a cake?
(5 marks)