Question

Suppose you are a researcher in a hospital. You are experimenting with a new tranquilizer. You collect data from a random sample of 8 patients. The period of effectiveness of the tranquilizer for each patient (in hours) is as follows:

2.3
2.8
2.3
2.6
2
2
3
2

a. What is a point estimate for the population mean length of time. (Round answer to 4 decimal places)

b. Which distribution should you use for this problem?

t-distribution

normal distribution

c. Why?


d. What must be true in order to construct a confidence interval in this situation?

The population standard deviation must be known

The population must be approximately normal

The sample size must be greater than 30

The population mean must be known

e. Construct a 99% confidence interval for the population mean length of time. Enter your answer as an open-interval(i.e., parentheses) Round upper and lower bounds to two decimal places

f. Interpret the confidence interval in a complete sentence. Make sure you include units  

g. What does it mean to be "99% confident" in this problem? Use the definition of confidence level.

99% of all simple random samples of size 8 from this population will result in confidence intervals that contain the population mean

The confidence interval contains 99% of all samples

There is a 99% chance that the confidence interval contains the population mean

h. Suppose that the company releases a statement that the mean time for all patients is 2 hours.

Is this possible?

No

Yes

Is it likely?

No

Yes

i. Use the results above and make an argument in favor or against the company's statement. Structure your essay as follows:

Describe the population and parameter for this situation.

Describe the sample and statistic for this situation.

Give a brief explanation of what a confidence interval is.

Explain what type of confidence interval you can make in this situation and why.

Interpret the confidence interval for this situation.

Restate the company's claim and whether you agree with it or not.

Use the confidence interval to estimate the likelihood of the company's claim being true.

Suggest what the company should do.

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Answer 1

a) The point estimate for the population mean:

b) T-distribution

c) Because the data is sampled data and size is less than 30.

d) The sample data must be approximatly normal.

e) 99% Confidence interval:

T- critical:

f) Confidence interval says, with 99% confidence can say that the true population would fall in between 1.894672, 2.855328