Research Statistics 1 2nd Quarter Exam Review

The following list of “You Should Be Able To” items doesn’t represent everything covered this quarter.
There are also questions to help you review additional topics and skills. Looking through the Study
Guides for Units 3-5 in addition to your Knowledge Checks and Unit Tests should be part of your review
process.

You Should Be Able To

Confirm mathematically that two events are independent

Explain the difference between mutually exclusive, dependent, and independent events

Understand and use the symbols for “and”, “or”, “complement”, and “not” in probability questions

Decide whether to use a combination or permutation to calculate a theoretical probability

Explain how to use a random digits table to randomly sample or randomly assign

Carry out a simulation based on a known probability

Use the Empirical Rule to find probabilities

Understand the difference between a sample’s distribution and a sampling distribution

State the conditions for the Central Limit Theorem

Calculate the probability of a value occurring from a normal or approximately normal population
Calculate the probability of a sample mean occurring from a normal or approximately normal population

Explain when a t-distribution is used

Construct and interpret a confidence interval based on sample data

Run a complete test of significance/hypothesis test for one sample, two samples, or matched pairs

There are some sample multiple choice problems below. These problems provide practice with the
multiple choice format. In no way do these problems represent all of the topics studied this semester.

1. Scores on the Scholastic Assessment Test are reported on a scale that yields a normal distribution with
mean 500 and standard deviation 100. Julie scores 600 on the SAT. Her standard score is
(a) z = -1 (b) z = 0 (c) z = 1 (d) z = 6 (e) z = 100

2. Scores on the Scholastic Assessment Test are reported on a scale that yields a normal distribution with
mean 500 and standard deviation 100. The percent of scores above 500 on the SAT is
(a) 99.7% (b) 95% (c) 68% (d) 50% (e) 34%

3. George has an average bowling score of 180 and bowls in a league where the average for all bowlers is
150 and the standard deviation is 20. Bill has an average bowling score of 190 and bowls in a league
where the average is 160 and the standard deviation is 15. Who ranks higher in his own league, George or
Bill?
(a) Bill, because his 190 is higher than George's 180.
(b) Bill, because his standard score is higher than George's.
(c) George, because his standard score is higher than Bill's.
(d) Bill and George have the same rank in their leagues, because they are both 30 pins above the mean.
(e) Bill and George have the same rank in their leagues, because their standard scores are equal.
4. Scores of adults on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (a common "IQ" test) follow a normal
distribution. The middle 95% of scores on this test range from 70 to 130. What is the standard deviation
of the test scores?
(a) 30 points (b) 15 points (c) 10 points (d) 7.5 points (e) 5 points

A multiple choice exam offers 5 choices for each question. Jason just guesses the answers, so he has a 1/5
probability of getting any one answer right. The next three questions concern Jason.

5. You want to simulate whether Jason's answers to 10 questions are right or wrong. One correct way to
do this is:
(a) One digit from the random digit table simulates one answer; 5 represents a right answer and all other
digits represent a wrong answer. Ten digits from the table simulate 10 answers.
(b) One digit from the random digit table simulates one answer; 0 or 1 represent a right answer and all
other digits represent a wrong answer. Ten digits from the table simulate 10 answers.
(c) One digit from the random digit table simulates one answer; odd represents a right answer and even
represents a wrong answer. Ten digits from the table simulate 10 answers.
(d) Two digits from the random digit table simulate one answer; 00 to 20 represents a right answer and 21
to 99 represents a wrong answer. Ten pairs of digits simulate 10 answers.
(e) Two digits from the random digit table simulate one answer; 00 to 05 represents a right answer and 06
to 99 represents a wrong answer. Ten pairs of digits simulate 10 answers.

6. One of your math major friends tells you that the assignment of probabilities to the number
of questions Jason gets right out of 10 is (rounded to three decimal places):

What is the probability that Jason will get no more than two of the 10 questions right?
(a) 0.302 (b) 0.322 (c) 0.376 (d) 0.678 (e) 0.698

7. What is the expected number of right answers Jason will get?

(a) 4 (b) 3 (c) 2 (d) 1
(e) Can't tell from the information given.

A study of drug addicts in Amsterdam recorded how

often each addict had recently injected drugs and
whether the addict was infected with HIV, the virus that
causes AIDS. Here is a two-way table of the numbers of
addicts in each condition:

The next three questions concern the data in this table.

8. How many addicts did the study gather data from?

(a) 156 (b) 86 (c) 77 (d) 70 (e) Can't tell from the table.

9. About what percent of addicts inject daily?

(a) 20.5%. (b) 41.6%. (c) 44.9%. (d) 45.7%. (e) 49.3%.

10. If an addict from this study is chosen at random, what is the probability they are not infected with
HIV, given they inject less than daily?
(a) 0.42 (b) 0.45 (c) 0.47 (d) 0.52 (e) 0.55
11. Choose a woman over 18 years of age at random from the entire U.S. population. Here are the
probabilities for her marital status:
Outcome: Single Married Widowed Divorced
Probability: ? 0.58 0.12 0.10

To make this a legitimate probability distribution, the probability that the woman chosen is single must be
(a) 1 (b) 0.8 (c) 0.42 (d) 0.2 (e) 0.02

12. License plates in your state have 3 letters followed by 3 numbers. But in order to avoid confusion
with numbers, the letters “I” and “O” are not used. How many different possible license plates can be
created?
(a) 13,824 (b) 17,576 (c) 12,812,904 (d) 13,824,000 (e) 17,576,000

13. If the Department of Motor Vehicles issues you a license plate at random with the arrangement of
letters and numbers described in the previous problem, what is the probability that the first two letters are
S’s?
(a) 0.00007 (b) 0.0015 (c) 0.0017 (d) 0.0385 (e) 0.0417

14. An English teacher wants to choose 3 novels from a recommended list of 10 for her course. Two of
the books on the list are by Kurt Vonnegut. If the teacher chooses her set of three books at random, what
is the probability that exactly one of them is by Vonnegut?
(a) 0.16 (b) 0.20 (c) 0.23 (d) 0.33 (e) 0.47

There are some sample free response problems below. In no way do these problems represent all of the
topics studied this semester.
1. Use this table to answer the following questions about a sample of American adults:
Smoking Status
Education Never smoked Smoked, but quit Smokes
Did not complete high school 82 19 113
Completed high school 97 25 103
1 to 3 years of college 92 49 59
4 or more years of college 86 63 37

a. What is the probability that a randomly selected American adult smokes?

b. What is the probability that a randomly selected American adult smokes and did not complete high
school?
c. What is the probability that a randomly selected American adult completed high school (with no
college), given they never smoked?
d. What is the probability that a randomly selected American adult quit smoking, given they had 4 or
more years of college?

2. Find the number of outcomes or the theoretical probabilities.

a. You need to make a password with four letters followed by 3 numbers, with no letters or digits
repeated. How many possible passwords can you make?
b. Shawna is carrying nine pages of math homework and four pages of English homework. A gust
of wind blows the pages out of her hands, and she is only able to recover seven random pages.
What is the probability that she recovers exactly five pages of her math homework?
c. A small pond contains five catfish and four bluegill. If six fish are caught, what is the probability
that at least three are bluegill?
3. Suppose the durations of human pregnancies have an approximately normal distribution with a mean of
266 days and standard deviation of 16 days.
a. Sketch a well-labeled graph of the distribution.
b. Using the empirical rule, find the length of the longest 16% of all pregnancies.
c. Find the interval that contains the middle 95% of all pregnancies.
d. Find the maximum length of the shortest 2.5% of all pregnancies.
e. What z-score does a pregnancy of 257 days have?
f. What percent of women have a pregnancy lasting between 234 and 282 days?

4. A large pet store that specializes in tropical fish has several thousand guppies. The store claims that the
guppies have a mean length of 5 cm and a standard deviation of 0.5 cm, and that guppy lengths follow a
normal distribution. You come to the store and buy 10 randomly selected guppies and find that the mean
length of your 10 guppies is 4.8 cm. This makes you suspect that the mean fish length is not what the
store says it is.

a. What is the probability of your sample mean, 4.8 cm, occurring?

b. Based on your sample, do you think the store’s stated mean of 5 cm is valid?
c. Because you like tropical fish, you return to the store on another day and buy 15 randomly
selected guppies. What is the probability that the mean length of your new sample of guppies is
between 5.1 and 5.2 cm?

5. Considerable research is being done in bioremediation—the use of living organisms to clean up

pollution. In an experiment, researchers used fungi to degrade hydrocarbons, the by-products of
incomplete combustion of fossil fuels. These by-products can cause cancer, and their accumulation in
water and soil poses an environmental hazard. To be cost-effective, a minimum of 1.00
micromoles/minute/gram of soil of a particular hydrocarbon must be degraded. The researchers added
fungi and growth media (essentially sugar) to the soil in 9 containers with random samples of soil and
obtained the following mean and standard deviations for the degradation rates in micromoles/min/gram:

a. Construct a 90% confidence interval for the mean degradation rate.

b. Interpret the interval in context.
c. Can the researchers be confident that this process will be cost effective?

6. Does too much sleep impair intellectual performance? Researchers examined this commonly held
belief by comparing the performance of subjects on the mornings following (a) two normal night’s sleep
and (b) two nights of “extended sleep”. The order of these two treatments for each subject was
determined randomly. In the morning the subjects were given a number of tests of ability to think quickly
and clearly. One test was for vigilance where the lower the score, the more vigilant the subject (vigilance
= alertness). The following data were collected:

Carry out an appropriate test at a significance level of  = 0.05 to help answer the researchers’ question.

Use the following summary statistics and graphs in your test as needed:

mean SD
x = 1.076 s = 0.158
 mean SD
Normal Sleep 9.8 6.828
Extended Sleep 13 10.904
Difference 3.2 5.865
(Extended –
Normal)

7. Daphnia pulicaria is a water flea—a small crustacean that lives in lakes and is a major food supply for
many species of fish. When fish are present in the lake water, they release chemicals called kairomones.
Researchers suspect that the kairomones in the water induce water fleas to grow long tail spines that make
them more difficult for the fish to eat. One study of this phenomenon compared the relative length of tail
spines in Daphnia pulicaria when kairomones were present to when they were not. Below are data on the
relative tail spine lengths, measured as a percentage of the entire length of the water flea. The samples
were randomly collected.

Carry out an appropriate test at a significance level of  = 0.05 to help answer the researchers’ question.
Then construct a 90% confidence interval and interpret it in the context of the problem.