SAMPLING and SAMPLING DISTRIBUTIONS

Word Problems

Solve the following problems.

1. The small town of Prieto Diaz has 4,457 households. The local government is
debating on whether or not a new school is needed. In a random sample, 163 out
of 255 households have at least one child under the age of 5 years old.
Approximately how many households in the entire town have at least one child
under 5 years old? Should the local government build another school? Explain your
answer.

2. The librarian wants to know if the students feel that the library has sufficient
resources and material. In a random sample, 24 out of 60 students tell her personally
that the library is well equipped and the rest say it is not. The school has a total
population of 1, 323 students. About how many students in the school feel the library
DOES NOT have enough resources and material? Do you think this is a valid sample
and can it be used to make proper inferences?

3. You’re interested in knowing what percent of all households in a large city have a
single woman as the head of the household. To estimate this percentage, you
conduct a survey with 200 households and determine how many of these 200 are
headed by a single woman. Distinguish which pertains to population and sample,
parameter and statistic. Explain why?

4. A sociologist wants to know the proportion of adults with children under the age of
18 that eat dinner together 7 nights a week. A simple random sample of 1122
adults with children under the age of 18 was obtained, and 337 of those adults
reported eating dinner together with their families 7 nights a week. Identify the
parameter and the statistic.

5. The entire student body of 225 students took a test. These test scores have
a mean of 75, a standard deviation of 10, and are slightly positively skewed.
If you randomly chose 25 of these test scores and calculated the mean over
and over again, what could be the mean, standard deviation, and skew of
this distribution?

6. In a fifth-grade class, the teacher was interested in the average age and the sample
standard deviation of the ages of her students. The following data are the ages for
a SAMPLE of n = 20 fifth grade students. The ages are rounded to the nearest half
year: 9; 9.5; 9.5; 10; 10; 10; 10; 10.5; 10.5; 10.5; 10.5; 11; 11; 11; 11; 11; 11;
11.5; 11.5; 11.5
 Compute for the average age and the sample variance using the table below.

7. Assume that scores on a math exam are normally distributed for students in a
particular university, with a mean of 10 and a variance of 9. You draw a sample and
calculate the sample mean, what would be the relation of the sample mean to the
population mean?

For 8-9. The distribution of values in Population A is strongly skewed right. The
distribution of values in Population B is flat all the way across (this is called a
uniform distribution). The distribution of values in Population C is strongly skewed
left. The values in Population D have a normal distribution.

8. Suppose that samples of size 20 are repeatedly taken from the four populations.
Which population is likely to have an approximately normal distribution for the
sampling distribution of the sample mean?

9. Suppose that samples of size 40 are repeatedly taken from the four
populations. What shape do you expect the sampling distribution of the
sample means to take?

10.Your friend is doing an experiment drawing samples of size 50 from a population

11. In a recent study reported Oct. 29, 2012 on the Flurry Blog, the mean age of tablet
users is 34 years. Suppose the standard deviation is 15 years. Take a sample of
size n = 100. What does the distribution look like based from Central Limit
Theorem?
 12. The average age of a vehicle registered in the United States is 8 years, or 96
months. Assume the standard deviation is 16 months. If a random sample of 36
vehicles is selected, find the probability that the mean of their age is between 90
and 100 months. Source: Harper’s Index.

13.Applying the law of large numbers, which sample mean would expect to be closer to
the population mean, a sample of size ten or a sample of size 100? Prove your
answer.

14. The length of time, in hours, it takes an "over 40" group of people to play one
soccer match is normally distributed with a mean of two hours and a standard
deviation of 0.5 hours. A sample of size n = 50 is drawn randomly from the
population. Find the probability that the sample mean is between 1.8 hours and 2.3
hours.

15. Consider a school district that has 10,000 11th graders. In this district, the
average weight of an 11th grader is 45 kg, with a standard deviation of 10 kg.
Suppose you draw a random sample of 50 learners. What is the probability that the
average weight of a sampled student will be less than 42.5 kg?

Scoring Criteria:

4 Points: Outstanding. The answer is correct, clear, and complete. Workable and
efficient solution is constructed. The explanation includes a mathematically correct reason.

3 Points: Very Good Response. The answer is correct. Math concepts and procedures
are used but some is not applicable. The explanation lacks clarity and incomplete.

2 Points: Good Response. The answer is incorrect. The explanation lacks clarity or is
incomplete but does indicate some correct and relevant reasoning.

1 Point: Poor Response. The answer is incorrect. Attempted to use some math concepts
and procedures. The explanation, if there is any, uses irrelevant argument. No solution is
attempted beyond just copying data given in the problem statement.

0 Point: No Response. The student’s paper is blank.

1. (163/255)•4457=2848.9843≈2849

About 2,849 households. Yes, there are a lot of new, young children in the
community or NO, the the sample might be too small and they need more data.

2. (24/60)*1323=529.2; 1323-529.2=793.8≈794

About 794 students, no, the sample is small and it could be considered bias for lack of
anonymity since the students tell her personally.

3.
4. The parameter is the proportion of adults with kids under 18 who ate together 7
nights a week. The statistic is 337/1122=0.300, the proportion in the sample who
ate together.
5. Mean = 75, SD = 10, Skew = 1.2

6.

7. Larger samples tend to yield more precise estimates of the population mean. The
sample mean is the best unbiased estimate of the population mean, and a larger
 sample will generally produce a more precise estimate because larger samples
change less from sample to sample.

8. Population D, A sample size of 20 is too small to expect that the sampling

9. normal for all four populations, Because the sample size is fairly large (40), the
central limit theorem tells you that the sampling distribution of sample means is
expected to be normal as well, no matter what kind of distribution the underlying
individual observations have, as long as the sample size is at least 30.

10.

11.The central limit theorem states that for large sample sizes(n), the sampling
distribution will be approximately normal.

12.

13.You would expect the mean from a sample of size 100 to be nearer to the
population mean, because the law of large numbers says that as sample size
increases, the sample mean tends to approach the population mean.

16. The probability which the mean time is between 1.8 hours and 2.3 hours is
99.77%

14. The probability that the average weight of a sampled student will be less than 42.5
kg is approximately equal to 0.038 or 3.8%