Math Problem Statement
A survey of 122 randomly selected students at one college showed that only 90 checked their campus email account on a regular basis. Construct a 90% confidence interval for the percentage of students at the college who do not check their email account on a regular basis. Round to one decimal place.
Solution
To construct a 90% confidence interval for the percentage of students who do not check their email on a regular basis, let's proceed with the following steps:
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Calculate the sample proportion of students who do not check their email regularly:
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Determine the complement of the confidence level:
Since we want a 90% confidence level, the complement is . Dividing by 2 for the two tails of the normal distribution gives . -
Find the critical z-value for a 90% confidence level: For a 90% confidence interval, the critical z-value () is approximately 1.645.
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Calculate the standard error: The standard error for a proportion is given by:
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Construct the confidence interval: The confidence interval is given by: Substituting in our values: This gives an interval of approximately .
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Convert to a percentage and round: So, the 90% confidence interval for the percentage of students who do not check their email regularly is (19.5%, 32.9%).
Would you like more details on any of these steps, or have further questions?
Here are five related questions to deepen understanding:
- How would the confidence interval change with a 95% confidence level?
- What effect does increasing the sample size have on the width of the confidence interval?
- How would the confidence interval change if the proportion of students not checking email was higher?
- Why is it important to check if the sample is random when constructing confidence intervals?
- How would the interpretation differ if this was a one-sided confidence interval?
Tip: Increasing the sample size decreases the standard error, making the confidence interval narrower and more precise.
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Math Problem Analysis
Mathematical Concepts
Statistics
Confidence Intervals
Proportions
Formulas
Sample Proportion (p̂) = Number of successes / Total sample size
Standard Error (SE) = sqrt(p̂(1 - p̂) / n)
Confidence Interval = p̂ ± z * SE
Theorems
Central Limit Theorem
Standard Normal Distribution
Suitable Grade Level
Grades 10-12
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