In: Math
Is smoking during pregnancy associated with premature births? To investigate this question, researchers selected a random sample of 131 pregnant women who were smokers. The average pregnancy length for this sample of smokers was 262 days. From a large body of research, it is known that length of human pregnancy has a standard deviation of 16 days. The researchers assume that smoking does not affect the variability in pregnancy length. Find the 95% confidence interval to estimate the length of pregnancy for women who smoke. (Note: The critical z -value to use, z c , is: 1.960) ( , ) Your answer should be rounded to 3 decimal places.
Solution :
Given that,
= 262
= 16
n = 131
At 95% confidence level the z is ,
= 1 - 95% = 1 - 0.95 = 0.05
/ 2 = 0.05 / 2 = 0.025
Z/2 = Z0.025 = 1.96
Margin of error = E = Z/2* ( /n)
= 1.96 * (16 / 131)
= 2.740
At 95% confidence interval estimate of the population mean is,
- E < < + E
262 - 2.740 < < 262 + 2.740
259.260 < < 264.740
(259.260, 264.740)