IST1014 / IST1024 INTRODUCTION TO STATISTICS

Tutorial 7: Estimation and Confidence Intervals

1. Calcium is the most abundant mineral in the human body and has several important
functions. Most body calcium is stored in the bones and teeth, where it functions to
support their structure. Recommendations for calcium are provided in Dietary
Reference Intakes, developed by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of
Sciences. The recommended adequate intake (RAI) of calcium for adults (ages 19–50) is
1000 milligrams (mg) per day. A simple random sample of 18 adults with incomes
below the poverty level gave the following daily calcium intakes.

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886 633 943 847 934 841
1193 820 774 834 1050 1058
1192 975 1313 872 1079 809
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a) Use the data to obtain a point estimate of the mean calcium intake, µ, of all adults with
incomes below the poverty level.
b) Determine a 95% confidence interval for the mean calcium intake, µ, of all adults with
incomes below the poverty level. Assume that the population standard deviation is 188
mg. (Note: The sum of the data is 17,053 mg.) Interpret your answer.
c) Find a 90% confidence interval for µ.
d) Why is the confidence interval you found in part (c) shorter than the one in (b)?
e) Which confidence interval yields a more precise estimate of µ? Explain your answer.

2. According to a research on smart transportation in urban cities, more than 85% of

working adults commute by car. A sample of 30 commuters in the Washington, D.C.,
area yielded the following commute times, in minutes.

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24 28 31 29 54 28
27 38 24 14 46 38
31 16 21 11 21 15
30 29 17 23 27 18
29 44 19 35 34 38
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Find a 90% confidence interval for the mean commute time of all commuters in
Washington, D.C. Interpret your answer.

3. A sample of 50 packages mailed from a specific post office showed a mean mailing
charge of $2.85 with a standard deviation of $0.72. Construct a 99% confidence interval
for the mean mailing charge for all packages mailed from this post office.

4. An auto parts supplier wants information about how long car owners plan to keep their
cars. Based on data from a poll, a simple random sample of 25 car owners results in 𝑥̅ =
7.01 years and 𝑠 = 3.74 years, respectively. Assume that the sample is drawn from a
normally distributed population. Find a 95% confidence interval estimate of the
population mean.
5. A researcher wants to determine a 95% confidence interval for the mean number of
hours that high school students spend doing homework per week. She knows that the
standard deviation for hours spent per week by all high school students doing
homework is 9. How large a sample should the researcher select so that the estimate
will be within 1.5 hours of the population mean?

6. According to the Stern Marketing Group, 9 out of 10 professional women say that
financial planning is more important today than it was five years ago. Where do these
women go for help in financial planning? Forty-seven percent use a financial advisor
whilst twenty-eight percent use written sources such as magazines, books, and
newspapers. Suppose that these figures were obtained by taking a sample of 560
professional women who said that financial planning is more important today than it
was five years ago. Construct a 95% confidence interval for the proportion of
professional women who use a financial advisor. Use the percentage given in this
problem as the point estimate.

7. Suppose that a survey of 275 executives is taken in an effort to determine what qualities
are most important for an effective CEO to possess. The survey participants are offered
several qualities as options, one of which is “communication”. One hundred twenty-one
of the surveyed respondents select “communicator” as the most important quality for an
effective CEO. Use these data to construct a 98% confidence interval to estimate the
population proportion of executives who believe that “communicator” is the most
important quality of an effective CEO.