STAT6202 Exercises 5

1. Consider the data on incomes in Question 3 of Exercises 2. The sample mean and standard deviation of the log (to
base e) income were 5.779 and 0.4723, and the sample size was 100.
(a) Estimate the standard error of the sample mean loge income.
(b) Obtain a 95% confidence interval for the population mean of the loge incomes.
(c) If the limits of the interval obtained in (b) are denoted by L and U , a 95% confidence interval for the
population geometric mean income has lower and upper limits given by eL and eU . Calculate these limits.
2. A particular task in a manufacturing industry is known to take 15 minutes, on average. The management wants
to introduce a new way of doing it that should prove cheaper in the tools required and cleaner for the workers.
However, they want the mean time to be unchanged in order to avoid other costs. They measure the times (in
minutes) for twelve completions of the task under the new conditions by different workers chosen at random and
obtain the following results:
13.6 12.3 16.3 15.1 13.8 15.2 14.5 14.0 13.3 14.2 16.1 14.1

(a) Calculate the sample mean and standard deviation of these 12 times.
(b) Use a significance test to assess whether there is evidence that the mean time for completing the task has
changed, using the following procedure:
i. Set up the null and alternative hypotheses defining any notation you use.
ii. State any assumptions you are making and check whether they are reasonable by drawing a dot plot of
the data.
iii. Obtain the test statistic t.
iv. Obtain a range for the P value.
v. Draw a statistical conclusion based on the P-value.
vi. Interpret your statistical conclusion.

3. A government department maintains that the mean income of one-parent families is £73.00 per week. A one-parent
family action group believes that the true figure is lower than this; so it takes a random sample of 16 families and
records the weekly incomes (in £) shown in the following table.

59.70 78.50 52.80 59.30 67.90 69.00 70.20 70.40

61.30 62.70 66.80 68.10 55.70 67.50 74.20 81.80

(a) The sample mean and standard deviation of these sixteen incomes are 66.61875 and 7.83924 respectively.
Test whether the population mean income for one-parent families is less than £73.00 per week by following
the procedure of Question 2(b) and using a one-sided test.
(b) Obtain 95% and 99% confidence intervals for the population mean income. Interpret these confidence inter-
vals.
(c) Is your answer to question (b) in line with your conclusion in (a)?

4. When planning a survey, a researcher often wants to know how large a sample to take in order to obtain a useful
estimate of a population mean. One method is to choose n so that the standard error of the estimate is some desired
√
value c, say. That is, choose n so that σ/ n = c, where the standard deviation σ may be known or a sensible value
for it can be guessed. Here is an example to try:
(a) As a quality control check on the minting of Austrian schillings, a random sample is to be taken from the
production and the average weight found. From long experience it is known that the standard deviation of
the weight of schillings is 0.04 grams. How large a sample should be taken so that the standard error of the
estimate of the population mean weight of schillings is 0.005 grams? How large a sample is needed for the
standard error to be 0.01 grams?
(b) What would be the approximate length of a 95% confidence interval for the population mean weight in each
case in (a)?