RANDOM VARIABLES AND DISTRIBUTIONS

Review Isaiah
Normal distribution: Finding a raw score

Español

Explanation Page
QUESTION

mg mg
Calcium levels in people are normally distributed with a mean of 9.6 and a standard deviation of 0.4 . Individuals with calcium levels in the bottom 5%
dL dL
of the population are considered to have low calcium levels. Find the calcium level that is the borderline between low calcium levels and those not considered
low. Carry your intermediate computations to at least four decimal places. Round your answer to one decimal place.

EXPLANATION

mg mg
We are told that calcium levels follow a normal distribution with mean 9.6 and standard deviation 0.4 . We are asked to find the calcium level that
dL dL
separates the bottom5% of the population of calcium levels from the top 95%. This means that we must find the number x such that the area under the
corresponding normal curve and to the right of x is 0.95 . See the figure.

Letting X represent the calcium level of a person, we're looking for the number x such that the following holds.

P X > x = 0.95
0.95
By hypothesis, X follows a normal distribution with mean μ = 9.6 and standard deviation σ = 0.4 . Since the ALEKS
calculator (or a table in any introductory statistics text) only provides information regarding the standard normal X

distribution, we must transform X into a form Z that follows a standard normal distribution. We do this by x 9.6
subtracting μ from X and then dividing by σ. (This transformation is often called "converting to a z-score".) We
have the following.

0.95 =  P X > x
X−μ x−μ
=  P >
σ σ
X − 9.6 x − 9.6
=  P >
0.4 0.4
x − 9.6
=  P Z >
0.4

x − 9.6
Thus, P Z> = 0.95 . In other words, the area under the standard normal curve and to the right of
0.4
x − 9.6
is 0.95. See the figure. The value that cuts off an area of 0.95 to the right under the standard normal
0.95
0.4
curve is denoted z0.95 , so we have the following.

Z
x − 9.6
= z0.95 x − 9.6 0
0.4 0.4

Using the ALEKS calculator, we get that z0.95 is approximately − 1.6449, so we have the following.

x − 9.6
= − 1.6449
0.4

Solving this equation for x, we obtain x = 8.942  ≈ 8.9.

ANSWER

mg
8.9
dL

Another Explanation More Practice

© 2022 McGraw Hill LLC. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Center | Accessibility