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Ch. 7 - Estimating Parameters and Determining Sample Sizes
Triola - Elementary Statistics 14th Edition
Triola14th EditionElementary StatisticsISBN: 9780137366446Not the one you use?Change textbook
Chapter 7, Problem 7.4.11a

Archeology Archeologists have studied sizes of Egyptian skulls in an attempt to determine whether breeding occurred between different cultures. Listed below are the widths (mm) of skulls from 150 A.D. (based on data from Ancient Races of the Thebaid by Thomson and Randall-Maciver).


a. Use 1000 bootstrap samples to construct a 99% confidence interval estimate of the mean skull width.


"Widths of Egyptian skulls in mm: 128, 138, 126, 132, 143, 135, 139, 129."

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Step 1: Understand the problem. We are tasked with constructing a 99% confidence interval for the mean skull width using 1000 bootstrap samples. Bootstrap sampling involves resampling the given data with replacement to estimate the sampling distribution of a statistic.
Step 2: Collect the data. The skull widths provided are: 128, 138, 126, 132, 143, 135, 139, and 129 mm. These values will be used for bootstrap resampling.
Step 3: Perform bootstrap sampling. Generate 1000 bootstrap samples by randomly selecting values from the original dataset with replacement. Each sample should have the same size as the original dataset (8 values). For each bootstrap sample, calculate the mean skull width.
Step 4: Construct the confidence interval. After obtaining 1000 bootstrap sample means, sort these means in ascending order. To construct a 99% confidence interval, identify the 0.5th percentile and the 99.5th percentile of the sorted bootstrap means. These percentiles represent the lower and upper bounds of the confidence interval.
Step 5: Interpret the results. The 99% confidence interval provides a range within which the true mean skull width is likely to fall, with 99% certainty based on the bootstrap sampling method.

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Key Concepts

Here are the essential concepts you must grasp in order to answer the question correctly.

Bootstrap Sampling

Bootstrap sampling is a resampling technique used to estimate the distribution of a statistic by repeatedly sampling with replacement from the observed data. This method allows researchers to create multiple simulated samples, which can be used to assess the variability of a statistic, such as the mean. It is particularly useful when the sample size is small or when the underlying distribution is unknown.
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Sampling Distribution of Sample Proportion

Confidence Interval

A confidence interval is a range of values, derived from sample statistics, that is likely to contain the true population parameter with a specified level of confidence, typically expressed as a percentage. For example, a 99% confidence interval suggests that if the same sampling method were repeated multiple times, approximately 99% of the calculated intervals would contain the true mean. This concept is crucial for understanding the precision and reliability of statistical estimates.
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Introduction to Confidence Intervals

Mean Calculation

The mean, or average, is a measure of central tendency calculated by summing all values in a dataset and dividing by the number of values. In the context of the skull widths provided, calculating the mean gives a single value that represents the typical width of the skulls in the sample. Understanding how to compute the mean is fundamental in statistics, as it serves as a basis for further analysis, including the construction of confidence intervals.
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Related Practice
Textbook Question

E-Cigarettes A New York Times article reported that a survey conducted in 2014 included 36,000 adults, with 3.7% of them being regular users of e-cigarettes. Because e-cigarette use is relatively new, there is a need to obtain today’s usage rate. How many adults must be surveyed now if we want a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error of 1.5 percentage points?


a. Assume that nothing is known about the rate of e-cigarette usage among adults.

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Textbook Question

Critical Thinking. In Exercises 17–28, use the data and confidence level to construct a confidence interval estimate of p, then address the given question.


Tennis Challenges In a recent U. S. Open tennis tournament, women playing singles matches used challenges on 137 calls made by the line judges. Among those challenges, 33 were found to be successful with the call overturned.


a. Construct a 99% confidence interval for the percentage of successful challenges.

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Textbook Question

Comparing Waiting Lines


The values listed below are waiting times (in minutes) of customers at the Jefferson Valley Bank, where customers enter a single waiting line that feeds three teller windows. Construct a 95% confidence interval for the population standard deviation sigma.

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Textbook Question

Cell Phone Radiation Here is a sample of measured radiation emissions (cW/kg) for cell phones (based on data from the Environmental Working Group): 38, 55, 86, 145. Here are ten bootstrap samples:

[Image]


a. Using only the ten given bootstrap samples, construct an 80% confidence interval estimate of the population mean.


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Textbook Question

Critical Thinking. In Exercises 17–28, use the data and confidence level to construct a confidence interval estimate of p, then address the given question.


Touch Therapy When she was 9 years of age, Emily Rosa did a science fair experiment in which she tested professional touch therapists to see if they could sense her energy field. She flipped a coin to select either her right hand or her left hand, and then she asked the therapists to identify the selected hand by placing their hand just under Emily’s hand without seeing it and without touching it. Among 280 trials, the touch therapists were correct 123 times (based on data in “A Close Look at Therapeutic Touch,” Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 279, No. 13).


a. Given that Emily used a coin toss to select either her right hand or her left hand, what proportion of correct responses would be expected if the touch therapists made random guesses?

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Textbook Question

Mean Pulse Rate of Males Data Set 1 “Body Data” in Appendix B includes pulse rates of 153 randomly selected adult males, and those pulse rates vary from a low of 40 bpm to a high of 104 bpm. Find the minimum sample size required to estimate the mean pulse rate of adult males. Assume that we want 99% confidence that the sample mean is within 2 bpm of the population mean.


a. Find the sample size using the range rule of thumb to estimate .


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