Sampling Distribution Center and Variability

In one region of the country, the mean length of stay in hospitals is 5.5 days with standard deviation 2.6 days. Because many patients stay in the hospital for considerably more days, the distribution of length of stay is strongly skewed to the right. Consider random samples of size 100 taken from the distribution with the mean length of stay, x, recorded for each sample. Which of the following is the best description of the sampling distribution of x ?

• Strongly skewed to the right with mean 5.5 days and standard deviation 2.6 days

• Strongly skewed to the right with mean 5.5 days and standard deviation 0.26 day

• Strongly skewed to the right with mean 5.5 days and standard deviation 0.026 day

• Approximately normal with mean 5.5 days and standard deviation 2.6 days

• Approximately normal with mean 5.5 days and standard deviation 0.26 day

Which of the following pairs of sample size n and population proportion p would produce the greatest standard deviation for the sampling distribution of a sample proportion p?

• n = 1,000 and p close to 0

• n = 1,000 and p close to 1

• n = 1,000 and p close to 1/2

• n = 100 and p close to 0

• n = 100 and p close to 1/2

Researchers will conduct a study of the television-viewing habits of children. They will select a simple random sample of children and record the number of hours of television the children watch per week. The researchers will report the sample mean as a point estimate for the population mean. Which of the following statements is correct for the sample mean as a point estimator?

• A sample of size 25 will produce more variability of the estimator than a sample of size 50.

• A sample of size 25 will produce less variability of the estimator than a sample of size 50.

Let X be a random variable that has a skewed distribution with mean µ = 10 and standard deviation σ = 10. Based on random samples of size 400, the sampling distribution of X is

• highly skewed with mean 10 and standard deviation 10

• highly skewed with mean 10 and standard deviation 5

• highly skewed with mean 10 and standard deviation 0.5

• approximately normal with mean 10 and standard deviation 10

• approximately normal with mean 10 and standard deviation 0.5

There were 5,317 previously owned homes sold in a western city in the year 2000. The distribution of the sales prices of these homes was strongly right-skewed, with a mean of $206,274 and a standard deviation of $37,881. If all possible simple random samples of size 100 are drawn from this population and the mean is computed for each of these samples, which of the following describes the sampling distribution of the sample mean?

• Approximately normal with mean $206,274 and standard deviation $3,788

• Approximately normal with mean $206,274 and standard deviation $37,881

• Approximately normal with mean $206,274 and standard deviation $520

• Strongly right-skewed with mean $206,274 and standard deviation $3,788

• Strongly right-skewed with mean $206,274 and standard deviation $37,881

A recent study was conducted to investigate the duration of time required to complete a certain manual dexterity task. The reported mean was 10.2 seconds with a standard deviation of 16.0 seconds. Suppose the reported values are the true mean and standard deviation for the population of subjects in the study. If a random sample of 144 subjects is selected from the population, what is the approximate probability that the mean of the sample will be more than 11.0 seconds?

• 0.1151

• 0.2743

• 0.7257

• 0.8849

• Based on the values of the true mean and true standard deviation, it can be concluded that the population distribution is not normal and therefore the probability cannot be calculated.