Download Introduction Randomness

214
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
Introduction
The reasoning of statistical inference rests on asking, “How often would this
method give a correct answer if I used it very many times?” Inference is most
secure when we produce data by random sampling or randomized comparative
experiments. The reason is that when we use chance to choose respondents or
assign subjects, the laws of probability answer the question “What would happen if we did this many times?” The purpose of this chapter is to see what the
laws of probability tell us, but without going into the mathematics of probability theory.
4.1 Randomness
What is the mean income of households in the United States? The government’s
Current Population Survey contacted a sample of 50,000 households in 1997.
Their mean income was x ⳱ $49,692.1 That $49,692 describes the sample,
but we use it to estimate the mean income of all households. We must now take
care to keep straight whether a number describes a sample or a population.
Here is the vocabulary we use.
PARAMETER, STATISTIC
A parameter is a number that describes the population. In statistical
practice, the value of a parameter is not known because we cannot
examine the entire population.
A statistic is a number that can be computed from the sample data
without making use of any unknown parameters. In practice, we often
use a statistic to estimate an unknown parameter.
EXAMPLE 4.1
Household income
The mean income of the sample of households contacted by the Current Population Survey was x ⳱ $49,692. The number $49,692 is a statistic because it describes
this one Current Population Survey sample. The population that the poll wants to
draw conclusions about is all 103 million U.S. households. The parameter of interest is the mean income of all of these households. We don’t know the value of this
parameter.
Remember: statistics come from samples, and parameters come from
populations. As long as we were just doing data analysis, the distinction between population and sample was not important. Now, however, it is essential.
The notation we use must reflect this distinction. We write ␮ (the Greek letter
Randomness
mu) for the mean of a population. This is a fixed parameter that is unknown
when we use a sample for inference. The mean of the sample is the familiar
x , the average of the observations in the sample. This is a statistic that would
almost certainly take a different value if we chose another sample from the same
population. The sample mean x from a sample or an experiment is an estimate
of the mean ␮ of the underlying population.
population mean ␮
sample mean x
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................................
.A.P P. LY. .YO. U.R.K.N O. W. L.E D.G.E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
State whether each boldface number in Exercises 4.1 to 4.3 is a parameter or a
statistic.
4.1
4.2
4.3
A carload lot of ball bearings has mean diameter 2.5003 centimeters
(cm). This is within the specifications for acceptance of the lot by the
purchaser. By chance, an inspector chooses 100 bearings from the
lot that have mean diameter 2.5009 cm. Because this is outside the
specified limits, the lot is mistakenly rejected.
A telemarketing firm in Los Angeles uses a device that dials
residential telephone numbers in that city at random. Of the first
100 numbers dialed, 48% are unlisted. This is not surprising because
52% of all Los Angeles residential phones are unlisted.
A researcher carries out a randomized comparative experiment with
young rats to investigate the effects of a toxic compound in food.
She feeds the control group a normal diet. The experimental group
receives a diet with 2500 parts per million of the toxic material. After
8 weeks, the mean weight gain is 335 grams for the control group
and 289 grams for the experimental group.
The idea of probability
How can x , based on a sample of only a few of the 100 million American households, be an accurate estimate of ␮ ? After all, a second random sample taken
at the same time would choose different households and no doubt produce a
different value of x . This basic fact is called sampling variability: the value of
a statistic varies in repeated random sampling.
To understand why sampling variability is not fatal, we must look closely at
chance behavior. The big fact that emerges is this: chance behavior is unpredictable in the short run but has a regular and predictable pattern in the
long run.
Toss a coin, or choose an SRS. The result can’t be predicted in advance,
because the result will vary when you toss the coin or choose the sample repeatedly. But there is still a regular pattern in the results, a pattern that emerges
clearly only after many repetitions. This remarkable fact is the basis for the idea
of probability.
sampling variability
215
216
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
Proportion of heads
1.0
0.8
0.6
probability = 0.5
0.4
0.2
1
5
10
50
100
Number of tosses
500
1000
Figure 4.1 The proportion of tosses of a coin that give a head changes as
we make more tosses. Eventually, however, the proportion approaches 0.5,
the probability of a head.
(SUPER STOCK.)
EXAMPLE 4.2
Coin tossing
When you toss a coin, there are only two possible outcomes, heads or tails. Figure
4.1 shows the results of tossing a coin 1000 times. For each number of tosses from
1 to 1000, we have plotted the proportion of those tosses that gave a head. The
first toss was a head, so the proportion of heads starts at 1. The second toss was a
tail, reducing the proportion of heads to 0.5 after two tosses. The next three tosses
gave a tail followed by two heads, so the proportion of heads after five tosses is 3/5,
or 0.6.
The proportion of tosses that produce heads is quite variable at first, but it settles
down as we make more and more tosses. Eventually this proportion gets close to
0.5 and stays there. We say that 0.5 is the probability of a head. The probability 0.5
appears as a horizontal line on the graph.
“Random” in statistics is not a synonym for “haphazard” but a description
of a kind of order that emerges only in the long run. We often encounter the
unpredictable side of randomness in our everyday experience, but we rarely
see enough repetitions of the same random phenomenon to observe the longterm regularity that probability describes. You can see that regularity emerging
in Figure 4.1. In the very long run, the proportion of tosses that give a head is
0.5. This is the intuitive idea of probability. Probability 0.5 means “occurs half
the time in a very large number of trials.”
We might suspect that a coin has probability 0.5 of coming up heads
just because the coin has two sides. As Exercises 4.4 and 4.5 illustrate, such
Randomness
217
suspicions are not always correct. The idea of probability is empirical. That is,
it is based on observation rather than theorizing. Probability describes what
happens in very many trials, and we must actually observe many trials to pin
down a probability. In the case of tossing a coin, some diligent people have in
fact made thousands of tosses.
EXAMPLE 4.3
Some coin tossers
The French naturalist Count Buffon (1707–1788) tossed a coin 4040 times. Result: 2048 heads, or proportion 2048/4040 = 0.5069 for heads.
Around 1900, the English statistician Karl Pearson heroically tossed a coin
24,000 times. Result: 12,012 heads, a proportion of 0.5005.
While imprisoned by the Germans during World War II, the South African mathematician John Kerrich tossed a coin 10,000 times. Result: 5067 heads, a proportion
of 0.5067.
RANDOMNESS AND PROBABILITY
We call a phenomenon random if individual outcomes are uncertain
but there is nonetheless a regular distribution of outcomes in a large
number of repetitions.
The probability of any outcome of a random phenomenon is the proportion of times the outcome would occur in a very long series of
repetitions.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................................
.A.P P. LY. .YO. U.R.K.N O. W. L.E D.G.E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.4
4.5
Pennies spinning. Hold a penny upright on its edge under your
forefinger on a hard surface, then snap it with your other forefinger
so that it spins for some time before falling. Based on 50 spins,
estimate the probability of heads.
Pennies falling over. You may feel that it is obvious that the
probability of a head in tossing a coin is about 1/2 because the coin
has two faces. Such opinions are not always correct. The previous
exercise asked you to spin a penny rather than toss it—that changes
the probability of a head. Now try another variation. Stand a penny
on edge on a hard, flat surface. Pound the surface with your hand
so that the penny falls over. What is the probability that it falls with
heads upward? Make at least 50 trials to estimate the probability of
a head.
Thinking about randomness
That some things are random is an observed fact about the world. The outcome of a coin toss, the time between emissions of particles by a radioactive
What looks random?
Toss a coin six times and
record heads (H) or tails (T)
on each toss. Which of these
outcomes is more probable:
HTHTTH or TTTHHH?
Almost everyone says that
HTHTTH is more probable,
because TTTHHH does not
“look random.” In fact, both
are equally probable. That
heads has probability 0.5
says that about half of a very
long sequence of tosses will be
heads. It doesn’t say that heads
and tails must come close to
alternating in the short run.
The coin doesn’t know what
past outcomes were, and it
can’t try to create a balanced
sequence.
218
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
independence
source, and the sexes of the next litter of lab rats are all random. So is the
outcome of a random sample or a randomized experiment. Probability theory
is the branch of mathematics that describes random behavior. Of course, we can
never observe a probability exactly. We could always continue tossing the coin,
for example. Mathematical probability is an idealization based on imagining
what would happen in an indefinitely long series of trials.
The best way to understand randomness is to observe random behavior—
not only the long-run regularity but the unpredictable results of short runs.
You can do this with physical devices, as in Exercises 4.4 to 4.8, but computer
simulations (imitations) of random behavior allow faster exploration. Exercises
4.11 and 4.13 suggest some simulations of random behavior. As you explore
randomness, remember:
You must have a long series of independent trials. That is, the outcome of
one trial must not influence the outcome of any other. Imagine a crooked
gambling house where the operator of a roulette wheel can stop it where
she chooses—she can prevent the proportion of “red” from settling down
to a fixed number. These trials are not independent.
The idea of probability is empirical. Computer simulations start with given
probabilities and imitate random behavior, but we can estimate a realworld probability only by actually observing many trials.
Nonetheless, computer simulations are very useful because we need
long runs of trials. In situations such as coin tossing, the proportion
of an outcome often requires several hundred trials to settle down to
the probability of that outcome. The kinds of physical random devices
suggested in the exercises are too slow for this. Short runs give only rough
estimates of a probability.
䢇
䢇
䢇
SECTION 4.1
S u m m a r y
A random phenomenon has outcomes that we cannot predict but that
nonetheless have a regular distribution in very many repetitions.
The probability of an event is the proportion of times the event occurs in
many repeated trials of a random phenomenon.
SECTION 4.1
4.6
4.7
E x e r c i s e s
Random digits. The table of random digits (Table B) was produced
by a random mechanism that gives each digit probability 0.1 of
being a 0. What proportion of the first 200 digits in the table are 0s?
This proportion is an estimate, based on 200 repetitions, of the true
probability, which in this case is known to be 0.1.
How many tosses to get a head? When we toss a penny, experience
shows that the probability (long-term proportion) of a head is close
to 1/2. Suppose now that we toss the penny repeatedly until we get
Randomness
4.8
4.9
4.10
219
a head. What is the probability that the first head comes up in an
odd number of tosses (1, 3, 5, and so on)? To find out, repeat this
experiment 50 times, and keep a record of the number of tosses
needed to get a head on each of your 50 trials.
(a) From your experiment, estimate the probability of a head on the
first toss. What value should we expect this probability to have?
(b) Use your results to estimate the probability that the first head
appears on an odd-numbered toss.
Tossing a thumbtack. Toss a thumbtack on a hard surface 100
times. How many times did it land with the point up? What is the
approximate probability of landing point up?
Three of a kind. You read in a book on poker that the probability of
being dealt three of a kind in a five-card poker hand is 1/50. Explain
in simple language what this means.
Probability is a measure of how likely an event is to occur. Match
one of the probabilities that follow with each statement of likelihood
given. (The probability is usually a more exact measure of likelihood
than is the verbal statement.)
4.11
4.12
(a) This event is impossible. It can never occur.
(b) This event is certain. It will occur on every trial.
(c) This event is very unlikely, but it will occur once in a while in a
long sequence of trials.
(d) This event will occur more often than not.
Shaq’s free throws. The basketball player Shaquille O’Neal makes
about half of his free throws over an entire season. Use software
to simulate 100 free throws shot independently by a player who
has probability 0.5 of making each shot. (In most software, the key
phrase to look for is “Bernoulli trials.” This is the technical term for
independent trials with Yes/No outcomes. Our outcomes here are
“Hit” and “Miss.”)
(a) What percent of the 100 shots did he hit?
(b) Examine the sequence of hits and misses. How long was the
longest run of shots made? Of shots missed? (Sequences of
random outcomes often show runs longer than our intuition
thinks likely.)
Winning a baseball game (EESEE). A study of the home-field
advantage in baseball found that over the period from 1969 to 1989
the league champions won 63% of their home games.2 The two
league champions meet in the baseball World Series. Would you use
the study results to assign probability 0.63 to the event that the home
team wins in a World Series game? Explain your answer.
(AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS.)
0 0.01 0.3 0.6 0.99 1
220
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
4.13
Simulating an opinion poll. A recent opinion poll showed that
about 73% of married women agree that their husbands do at least
their fair share of household chores. Suppose that this is exactly true.
Choosing a married woman at random then has probability 0.73 of
getting one who agrees that her husband does his share. Use software
to simulate choosing many women independently. (In most software,
the key phrase to look for is “Bernoulli trials.” This is the technical
term for independent trials with Yes/No outcomes. Our outcomes
here are “Agree” or not.)
(a) Simulate drawing 20 women, then 80 women, then 320 women.
What proportion agree in each case? We expect (but because of
chance variation we can’t be sure) that the proportion will be
closer to 0.73 in longer runs of trials.
(b) Simulate drawing 20 women 10 times and record the percents
in each trial who agree. Then simulate drawing 320 women 10
times and again record the 10 percents. Which set of 10 results
is less variable? We expect the results of 320 trials to be more
predictable (less variable) than the results of 20 trials. That is
“long-run regularity” showing itself.
4.2 Probability Models
Earlier chapters gave mathematical models for linear relationships (in the form
of the equation of a line) and for some distributions of data (in the form of normal density curves). Now we must give a mathematical description or model
for randomness. To see how to proceed, think first about a very simple random
phenomenon, tossing a coin once. When we toss a coin, we cannot know the
outcome in advance. What do we know? We are willing to say that the outcome will be either heads or tails. We believe that each of these outcomes has
probability 1/2. This description of coin tossing has two parts:
A list of possible outcomes.
A probability for each outcome.
Such a description is the basis for all probability models. Here is the basic
vocabulary we use.
䢇
䢇
PROBABILITY MODELS
The sample space S of a random phenomenon is the set of all possible
outcomes.
An event is any outcome or a set of outcomes of a random phenomenon. That is, an event is a subset of the sample space.
A probability model is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon consisting of two parts: a sample space S and a way of assigning probabilities to events.
Probability Models
221
Figure 4.2 The 36 possible
outcomes in rolling two dice.
The sample space S can be very simple or very complex. When we toss a
coin once, there are only two outcomes, heads and tails. The sample space is
S ⳱ 兵H, T其. If we draw a random sample of 50,000 U.S. households, as the
Current Population Survey does, the sample space contains all possible choices
of 50,000 of the 103 million households in the country. This S is extremely
large. Each member of S is a possible sample, which explains the term sample
space.
EXAMPLE 4.4
Rolling dice
Rolling two dice is a common way to lose money in casinos. There are 36 possible
outcomes when we roll two dice and record the up-faces in order (first die, second
die). Figure 4.2 displays these outcomes. They make up the sample space S . “Roll
a 5” is an event, call it A, that contains four of these 36 outcomes:
A⳱兵
其
Gamblers care only about the number of pips on the up-faces of the dice. The
sample space for rolling two dice and counting the pips is
S ⳱ 兵2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12其
Comparing this S with Figure 4.2 reminds us that we can change S by changing the
detailed description of the random phenomenon we are describing.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................................
.A.P P. LY. .YO. U.R.K.N O. W. L.E D.G.E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.14
In each of the following situations, describe a sample space S for the
random phenomenon. In some cases, you have some freedom in your
choice of S .
(a) A seed is planted in the ground. It either germinates or fails to
grow.
222
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
4.15
(b) A patient with a usually fatal form of cancer is given a new
treatment. The response variable is the length of time that the
patient lives after treatment.
(c) A student enrolls in a statistics course and at the end of the
semester receives a letter grade.
(d) A basketball player shoots four free throws. You record the
sequence of hits and misses.
(e) A basketball player shoots four free throws. You record the
number of baskets she makes.
In each of the following situations, describe a sample space S for
the random phenomenon. In some cases you have some freedom in
specifying S , especially in setting the largest and the smallest value
in S .
(a) Choose a student in your class at random. Ask how much time
that student spent studying during the past 24 hours.
(b) The Physicians’ Health Study asked 11,000 physicians to take an
aspirin every other day and observed how many of them had a
heart attack in a five-year period.
(c) In a test of a new package design, you drop a carton of a dozen
eggs from a height of 1 foot and count the number of broken
eggs.
(d) Choose a student in your class at random. Ask how much cash
that student is carrying.
(e) A nutrition researcher feeds a new diet to a young male white rat.
The response variable is the weight (in grams) that the rat gains
in 8 weeks.
Probability rules
The true probability of any outcome—say, “roll a 5 when we toss two dice”—
can be found only by actually tossing two dice many times, and then only
approximately. How then can we describe probability mathematically? Rather
than try to give “correct” probabilities, we start by laying down facts that must
be true for any assignment of probabilities. These facts follow from the idea
of probability as “the long-run proportion of repetitions on which an event
occurs.”
1. Any probability is a number between 0 and 1. Any proportion is a
number between 0 and 1, so any probability is also a number between
0 and 1. An event with probability 0 never occurs, and an event with
probability 1 occurs on every trial. An event with probability 0.5 occurs
in half the trials in the long run.
2. All possible outcomes together must have probability 1. Because some
outcome must occur on every trial, the sum of the probabilities for all
possible outcomes must be exactly 1.
Probability Models
3. The probability that an event does not occur is 1 minus the
probability that the event does occur. If an event occurs in (say) 70%
of all trials, it fails to occur in the other 30%. The probability that an
event occurs and the probability that it does not occur always add to
100%, or 1.
4. If two events have no outcomes in common, the probability that one
or the other occurs is the sum of their individual probabilities. If one
event occurs in 40% of all trials, a different event occurs in 25% of all
trials, and the two can never occur together, then one or the other occurs
on 65% of all trials because 40% Ⳮ 25% ⳱ 65%.
We can use mathematical notation to state Facts 1 to 4 more concisely. Capital letters near the beginning of the alphabet denote events. If A is any event,
we write its probability as P (A). Here are our probability facts in formal language. As you apply these rules, remember that they are just another form of
intuitively true facts about long-run proportions.
PROBABILITY RULES
Rule 1. The probability P (A) of any event A satisfies 0 ⱕ P (A) ⱕ 1.
Rule 2. If S is the sample space in a probability model, then P (S ) ⳱
1.
Rule 3. For any event A,
P (A does not occur) ⳱ 1 ⫺ P (A)
Rule 4. Two events A and B are disjoint if they have no outcomes in
common and so can never occur simultaneously. If A and B
are disjoint,
P (A or B ) ⳱ P (A) Ⳮ P (B )
This is the addition rule for disjoint events.
EXAMPLE 4.5
Marital status of young women
Draw a woman aged 25 to 29 years old at random and record her marital status.
“At random” means that we give every such woman the same chance to be the
one we choose. That is, we choose an SRS of size 1. The probability of any marital
status is just the proportion of all women aged 25 to 29 who have that status—if
we drew many women, this is the proportion we would get. Here is the probability
model:
Marital status
Probability
Never married
Married
Widowed
Divorced
0.353
0.574
0.002
0.071
223
224
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
Each probability is between 0 and 1. The probabilities add to 1, because these outcomes together make up the sample space S .
The probability that the woman we draw is not married is, by Rule 3,
P (not married) ⳱ 1 ⫺ P (married)
⳱ 1 ⫺ 0.574 ⳱ 0.426
That is, if 57.4% are married, then the remaining 42.6% are not married.
“Never married” and “divorced” are disjoint events, because no woman can be
both never married and divorced. So the addition rule says that
P (never married or divorced) ⳱ P (never married) Ⳮ P (divorced)
⳱ 0.353 Ⳮ 0.071 ⳱ 0.424
That is, 42.4% of women in this age group are either never married or divorced.
(SUPER STOCK.)
EXAMPLE 4.6
Probabilities for rolling dice
Figure 4.2 displays the 36 possible outcomes of rolling two dice. What probabilities should we assign to these outcomes?
Casino dice are carefully made. Their spots are not hollowed out, which would
give the faces different weights, but are filled with white plastic of the same density
as the colored plastic of the body. For casino dice it is reasonable to assign the
same probability to each of the 36 outcomes in Figure 4.2. Because all 36 outcomes
together must have probability 1 (Rule 2), each outcome must have probability
1/36.
Gamblers are often interested in the sum of the pips on the up-faces. What is the
probability of rolling a 5? Because the event “roll a 5” contains the four outcomes
displayed in Example 4.4, the addition rule (Rule 4) says that its probability is
P (roll a 5) ⳱ P (
) Ⳮ P(
⳱
1
1
1
1
Ⳮ
Ⳮ
Ⳮ
36
36
36
36
⳱
4
⳱ 0.111
36
) Ⳮ P(
) Ⳮ P(
)
What about the probability of rolling a 7? In Figure 4.2 you will find six outcomes
for which the sum of the pips is 7. The probability is 6/36, or about 0.167.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................................
.A.P P. LY. .YO. U.R.K.N O. W. L.E D.G.E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.16
Moving up. A sociologist studying social mobility in Denmark finds
that the probability that the son of a lower-class father remains in the
Probability Models
4.17
4.18
lower class is 0.46. What is the probability that the son moves to one
of the higher classes?
Causes of death. Government data assign a single cause for
each death that occurs in the United States. The data show that
the probability is 0.45 that a randomly chosen death was due to
cardiovascular (mainly heart) disease, and 0.22 that it was due
to cancer. What is the probability that a death was due either to
cardiovascular disease or to cancer? What is the probability that the
death was due to some other cause?
Do husbands do their share? The New York Times (August 21,
1989) reported a poll that interviewed a random sample of 1025
women. The married women in the sample were asked whether
their husbands did their fair share of household chores. Here are the
results:
Outcome
Probability
Does more than his fair share
Does his fair share
Does less than his fair share
0.12
0.61
?
These proportions are probabilities for the random phenomenon of
choosing a married woman at random and asking her opinion.
(a) What must be the probability that the woman chosen says that
her husband does less than his fair share? Why?
(b) The event “I think my husband does at least his fair share”
contains the first two outcomes. What is its probability?
Assigning probabilities: finite number of outcomes
Examples 4.5 and 4.6 illustrate one way to assign probabilities to events: assign a probability to every individual outcome, then add these probabilities
to find the probability of any event. If such an assignment is to satisfy the
rules of probability, the probabilities of all the individual outcomes must sum
to exactly 1.
PROBABILITIES IN A FINITE SAMPLE SPACE
Assign a probability to each individual outcome. These probabilities
must be numbers between 0 and 1 and must have sum 1.
The probability of any event is the sum of the probabilities of the outcomes making up the event.
225
What are the odds?
Gamblers often express chance
in terms of odds rather than
probability. Odds of A to B
against an outcome means
that the probability of that
outcome is B /(A Ⳮ B ). So
“odds of 5 to 1” is another
way of saying “probability
1/6.” A probability is always
between zero and one, but
odds range from zero to
infinity. Although odds are
mainly used in gambling, they
give us a way to make very
small probabilities clearer.
“Odds of 999 to 1” may be
easier to understand than
“probability 0.001.”
226
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
EXAMPLE 4.7
Random digits
The table of random digits in the back of the book was produced by software that
generates digits between 0 and 9 at random. If we produce one digit, the sample
space is
S ⳱ 兵0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9其
Careful randomization makes each outcome equally likely to be any of the 10 candidates. Because the total probability must be 1, the probability of each of the 10
outcomes must be 1/10. This assignment of probabilities to individual outcomes
can be summarized in a table as follows:
Really random digits
For purists, the RAND
Corporation long ago
published a book titled
One Million Random Digits.
The book lists 1,000,000
digits that were produced
by a very elaborate physical
randomization and really
are random. An employee of
RAND once told me that this
is not the most boring book
that RAND has ever published.
Outcome
Probability
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1
The probability of the event that an odd digit is chosen is
P (odd outcome) ⳱ P(1) Ⳮ P(3) Ⳮ P(5) Ⳮ P(7) Ⳮ P(9) ⳱ 0.5
This assignment of probability satisfies all of our rules. For example, we can find
the probability of an even digit from Rule 3:
P (even outcome) ⳱ P (outcome is not odd)
⳱ 1 ⫺ P (odd outcome)
⳱ 1 ⫺ 0.5 ⳱ 0.5
Check that you get the same result by adding the probabilities of all the possible
even outcomes.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................................
.A.P P. LY. .YO. U.R.K.N O. W. L.E D.G.E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.19
4.20
Rolling a die. Figure 4.3 displays several assignments of
probabilities to the six faces of a die. We can learn which assignment
is actually accurate for a particular die only by rolling the die
many times. However, some of the assignments are not legitimate
assignments of probability. That is, they do not obey the rules. Which
are legitimate and which are not? In the case of the illegitimate
models, explain what is wrong.
High school academic rank. Select a first-year college student at
random and ask what his or her academic rank was in high school.
Here are the probabilities, based on proportions from a large sample
survey of first-year students:
Probability Models
Probability
Outcome
Model 1
Model 2
Model 3
Model 4
1/7
1/3
1/3
1
1/7
1/6
1/6
1
1/7
1/6
1/6
2
1/7
0
1/6
1
1/7
1/6
1/6
1
1/7
1/6
1/6
2
Figure 4.3 Four assignments of probabilities to the six faces of a die, for
Exercise 4.19.
Rank
Top 20% Second 20% Third 20% Fourth 20% Lowest 20%
Probability
4.21
0.41
0.23
0.29
0.06
0.01
(a) What is the sum of these probabilities? Why do you expect the
sum to have this value?
(b) What is the probability that a randomly chosen first-year college
student was not in the top 20% of his or her high school class?
(c) What is the probability that a first-year student was in the top
40% in high school?
Blood types. All human blood can be typed as one of O, A, B, or
AB, but the distribution of the types varies a bit with race. Here is
the probability model for the blood type of a randomly chosen black
American:
Blood type
O
A
B
AB
Probability
0.49
0.27
0.20
?
(a) What is the probability of type AB blood? Why?
(b) Maria has type B blood. She can safely receive blood transfusions
from people with blood types O and B. What is the probability
that a randomly chosen black American can donate blood to
Maria?
227
228
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
Assigning probabilities: intervals of outcomes
Suppose that we want to choose a number at random between 0 and 1, allowing
any number between 0 and 1 as the outcome. A software random number
generator will do this. The sample space is now an entire interval of numbers:
S ⳱ 兵all numbers between 0 and 1其
Call the outcome of the random number generator Y for short. How can we
assign probabilities to such events as 兵0.3 ⱕ Y ⱕ 0.7其? As in the case of selecting a random digit, we would like all possible outcomes to be equally likely.
But we cannot assign probabilities to each individual value of Y and then add
them, because there are infinitely many possible values.
We use a new way of assigning probabilities directly to events—as areas
under a density curve. Any density curve has area exactly 1 underneath it, corresponding to total probability 1.
EXAMPLE 4.8
Random numbers
The random number generator will spread its output uniformly across the entire
interval from 0 to 1 as we allow it to generate a long sequence of numbers. The
results of many trials are represented by the uniform density curve shown in Figure
4.4. This density curve has height 1 over the interval from 0 to 1. The area under
the curve is 1, and the probability of any event is the area under the curve and above
the event in question.
As Figure 4.4(a) illustrates, the probability that the random number generator
produces a number between 0.3 and 0.7 is
P (0.3 ⱕ Y ⱕ 0.7) ⳱ 0.4
because the area under the density curve and above the interval from 0.3 to 0.7 is
0.4. The height of the curve is 1 and the area of a rectangle is the product of height
Area = 0.4
Area = 0.5
Area = 0.2
Height = 1
0
0.3
0.7
(a) P(0.3 ≤ Y ≤ 0.7)
1
0
0.5
0.8 1
(b) P(Y ≤ 0.5 or Y > .08)
Figure 4.4 Probability as area under a density curve. This uniform density
curve spreads probability evenly between 0 and 1.
Probability Models
and length, so the probability of any interval of outcomes is just the length of the
interval.
Similarly,
P (Y ⱕ 0.5) ⳱ 0.5
P (Y ⬎ 0.8) ⳱ 0.2
P (Y ⱕ 0.5 or Y ⬎ 0.8) ⳱ 0.7
Notice that the last event consists of two nonoverlapping intervals, so the total area
above the event is found by adding two areas, as illustrated by Figure 4.4(b). This
assignment of probabilities obeys all of our rules for probability.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................................
.A.P P. LY. .YO. U.R.K.N O. W. L.E D.G.E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.22
4.23
Random numbers. Let X be a random number between 0 and
1 produced by the idealized uniform random number generator
described in Example 4.8 and Figure 4.4. Find the following
probabilities:
(a) P (0 ⱕ X ⱕ 0.4)
(b) P (0.4 ⱕ X ⱕ 1)
(c) P (0.3 ⱕ X ⱕ 0.5)
(d) P (0.3 ⬍ X ⬍ 0.5)
Adding random numbers. Generate two random numbers between
0 and 1 and take Y to be their sum. The sum Y can take any value
between 0 and 2. The density curve of Y is the triangle shown in
Figure 4.5.
(a) Verify by geometry that the area under this curve is 1.
(b) What is the probability that Y is less than 1? (Sketch the density
curve, shade the area that represents the probability, then find
that area. Do this for (c) also.)
(c) What is the probability that Y is less than 0.5?
Height = 1
0
1
2
Figure 4.5 The density curve
for the sum of two random
numbers. This density curve
spreads probability between 0
and 2.
229
230
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
Normal probability distributions
Any density curve can be used to assign probabilities. The density curves that
are most familiar to us are the normal curves. So normal distributions are
probability models. There is a close connection between a normal distribution as an idealized description for data and a normal probability model. If we
look at the heights of all young women, we find that they closely follow the normal distribution with mean ␮ ⳱ 64.5 inches and standard deviation ␴ ⳱ 2.5
inches. That is a distribution for a large set of data. Now choose one young
woman at random. Call her height X . If we repeat the random choice very
many times, the distribution of values of X is the same normal distribution.
EXAMPLE 4.9
The height of young women
What is the probability that a randomly chosen young woman has height between 68 and 70 inches?
The height X of the woman we choose has the N (64.5, 2.5) distribution. Find
the probability by standardizing and using Table A, the table of standard normal
probabilities. We will reserve capital Z for a standard normal variable.
P (68 ⱕ X ⱕ 70) ⳱ P
冦
68 ⫺ 64.5
X ⫺ 64.5
70 ⫺ 64.5
ⱕ
ⱕ
2.5
2.5
2.5
冧
⳱ P (1.4 ⱕ Z ⱕ 2.2)
⳱ 0.9861 ⫺ 0.9192 ⳱ 0.0669
Figure 4.6 shows the areas under the standard normal curve. The calculation is
the same as those we did in Chapter 1. Only the language of probability is new.
Standard normal
curve
Probability = 0.0669
z = 1.4
z = 2.2
Figure 4.6 The probability in Example 4.9 as an area under the standard
normal curve.
Probability Models
Examples 4.8 and 4.9 use a shorthand notation that is often convenient.
We let X stand for the result of choosing a woman at random and measuring
her height. We know that X would take a different value if we took another
random sample. Because its value changes from one sample to another, we call
the height X a random variable.
RANDOM VARIABLE
A random variable is a variable whose value is a numerical outcome
of a random phenomenon.
The probability distribution of a random variable X tells us what
values X can take and how to assign probabilities to those values.
We usually denote random variables by capital letters near the end of the
alphabet, such as X or Y . Of course, the random variables of greatest interest
to us are outcomes such as the mean x of a random sample, for which we will
keep the familiar notation.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................................
.A.P P. LY. .YO. U.R.K.N O. W. L.E D.G.E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.24
4.25
Iowa Test scores. The normal distribution with mean ␮ ⳱ 6.8 and
standard deviation ␴ ⳱ 1.6 is a good description of the Iowa Test
vocabulary scores of seventh-grade students in Gary, Indiana. Figure
1.13 (page 46) pictures this distribution. Let the random variable X
be the Iowa Test score of one Gary seventh grader chosen at random.
(a) Write the event “the student chosen has a score of 10 or higher”
in terms of X .
(b) Find the probability of this event.
Rolling the dice. Example 4.6 describes the assignment of
probabilities to the 36 possible outcomes of tossing two dice. Take
the random variable X to be the sum of the values on the two upfaces. Example 4.6 shows that P (X ⳱ 5) ⳱ 4/36 and that P (X ⳱
7) ⳱ 6/36. Give the complete probability distribution of the random
variable X . That is, list the possible values of X and say what the
probability of each value is. Start from the 36 outcomes displayed
in Figure 4.2.
SECTION 4.2
S u m m a r y
A probability model for a random phenomenon consists of a sample space S
and an assignment of probabilities P .
231
232
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
The sample space S is the set of all possible outcomes of the random
phenomenon. Sets of outcomes are called events. P assigns a number P (A) to
an event A as its probability.
Any assignment of probability must obey the rules that state the basic
properties of probability:
1. 0 ⱕ P (A) ⱕ 1 for any event A.
2. P (S ) ⳱ 1.
3. For any event A, P (A does not occur) ⳱ 1 ⫺ P (A).
4. Addition rule: Events A and B are disjoint if they have no outcomes in
common. If A and B are disjoint, then P (A or B ) ⳱ P (A) Ⳮ P (B ).
When a sample space S contains finitely many possible values, a
probability model assigns each of these values a probability between 0 and
1 such that the sum of all the probabilities is exactly 1. The probability of any
event is the sum of the probabilities of all the values that make up the event.
A sample space can contain all values in some interval of numbers. A
probability model assigns probabilities as areas under a density curve. The
probability of any event is the area under the curve above the values that
make up the event.
A random variable is a variable taking numerical values determined
by the outcome of a random phenomenon. The probability distribution
of a random variable X tells us what the possible values of X are and how
probabilities are assigned to those values.
SECTION 4.2
4.26
4.27
4.28
4.29
E x e r c i s e s
Buy a hot dog and record how many calories it has. Give a reasonable
sample space S for your possible results. (Exercise 1.39 on page 42
contains some information to guide you.)
Choose a student at random and record the number of dollars in bills
(ignore change) that he or she is carrying. Give a reasonable sample
space S for this random phenomenon. (We don’t know the largest
amount that a student could reasonably carry, so you will have to
make a choice in stating the sample space.)
Land in Canada. Choose an acre of land in Canada at random. The
probability is 0.35 that it is forest and 0.03 that it is pasture.
(a) What is the probability that the acre chosen is not forested?
(b) What is the probability that it is either forest or pasture?
(c) What is the probability that a randomly chosen acre in Canada is
something other than forest or pasture?
Colors of M&M’s. If you draw an M&M candy at random from a
bag of the candies, the candy you draw will have one of six colors.
The probability of drawing each color depends on the proportion of
each color among all candies made.
(a) Here are the probabilities of each color for a randomly chosen
plain M&M:
Color
Probability
Brown
Red
Yellow
Green
Orange
Blue
0.3
0.2
0.2
0.1
0.1
?
What must be the probability of drawing a blue candy?
(b) The probabilities for peanut M&M’s are a bit different. Here they
are:
Color
Probability
4.30
4.31
Brown
Red
Yellow
Green
Orange
Blue
0.2
0.1
0.2
0.1
0.1
?
What is the probability that a peanut M&M chosen at random is
blue?
(c) What is the probability that a plain M&M is any of red, yellow,
or orange? What is the probability that a peanut M&M has one of
these colors?
Legitimate probabilities? In each of the following situations, state
whether or not the given assignment of probabilities to individual
outcomes is legitimate, that is, satisfies the rules of probability. If not,
give specific reasons for your answer.
(a) When a coin is spun, P (H) ⳱ 0.55 and P (T) ⳱ 0.45.
(b) When two coins are tossed, P (HH) ⳱ 0.4, P (HT) ⳱ 0.4,
P (TH) ⳱ 0.4, and P (TT) ⳱ 0.4.
(c) Plain M&M’s have not always had the mixture of colors given in
Exercise 4.29. In the past there were no red candies and no blue
candies. Tan had probability 0.10 and the other four colors had
the same probabilities that are given in Exercise 4.29.
Who goes to Paris? Abby, Deborah, Sam, Tonya, and Roberto work
in a firm’s public relations office. Their employer must choose two of
them to attend a conference in Paris. To avoid unfairness, the choice
will be made by drawing two names from a hat. (This is an SRS of
size 2.)
(a) Write down all possible choices of two of the five names. This is
the sample space.
(b) The random drawing makes all choices equally likely. What is the
probability of each choice?
233
(“M&M’S” CHOCOLATE CANDIES IS A
REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF MARS,
INCORPORATED AND USED WITH PERMISSION OF THE OWNER, 䉷MARS, INC.)
Probability Models
234
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
(FRANK SITEMAN/STOCK; BOSTON.)
4.32
(c) What is the probability that Tonya is chosen?
(d) What is the probability that neither of the two men (Sam and
Roberto) is chosen?
How big are farms? Choose an American farm at random and
measure its size in acres. Here are the probabilities that the farm
chosen falls in several acreage categories:
Acres
⬍ 10 10–49 50–99 100–179 180–499 500–999 1000–1999 ⱖ 2000
Probability
0.09
4.33
4.34
0.20
0.15
0.16
0.22
0.09
0.05
0.04
Let A be the event that the farm is less than 50 acres in size, and let B
be the event that it is 500 acres or more.
(a) Find P (A) and P (B ).
(b) Describe the event “A does not occur” in words and find its
probability by Rule 3.
(c) Describe the event “A or B ” in words and find its probability by
the addition rule.
Roulette. A roulette wheel has 38 slots, numbered 0, 00, and 1 to
36. The slots 0 and 00 are colored green, 18 of the others are red,
and 18 are black. The dealer spins the wheel and at the same time
rolls a small ball along the wheel in the opposite direction. The
wheel is carefully balanced so that the ball is equally likely to land
in any slot when the wheel slows. Gamblers can bet on various
combinations of numbers and colors.
(a) What is the probability of any one of the 38 possible outcomes?
Explain your answer.
(b) If you bet on “red,” you win if the ball lands in a red slot. What is
the probability of winning?
(c) The slot numbers are laid out on a board on which gamblers
place their bets. One column of numbers on the board contains
all multiples of 3, that is, 3, 6, 9, . . ., 36. You place a “column
bet” that wins if any of these numbers comes up. What is your
probability of winning?
Birth order. A couple plans to have three children. There are 8
possible arrangements of girls and boys. For example, GGB means
the first two children are girls and the third child is a boy. All 8
arrangements are (approximately) equally likely.
(a) Write down all 8 arrangements of the sexes of three children.
What is the probability of any one of these arrangements?
(b) Let X be the number of girls the couple has. What is the
probability that X ⳱ 2?
Probability Models
4.35
4.36
(c) Starting from your work in (a), find the distribution of X . That is,
what values can X take, and what are the probabilities for each
value?
Moving up. A study of social mobility in England looked at the
social class reached by the sons of lower-class fathers. Social classes
are numbered from 1 (low) to 5 (high). Take the random variable X
to be the class of a randomly chosen son of a father in Class 1. The
study found that the distribution of X is
Son’s class
1
2
3
4
5
Probability
0.48
0.38
0.08
0.05
0.01
(a) What percent of the sons of lower-class fathers reach the highest
class, Class 5?
(b) Check that this distribution satisfies the two requirements for a
legitimate assignment of probabilities to individual outcomes.
(c) What is P (X ⱕ 3)? (Be careful: the event “X ⱕ 3” includes the
value 3.)
(d) What is P (X ⬍ 3)?
(e) Write the event “a son of a lower-class father reaches one of
the two highest classes” in terms of values of X . What is the
probability of this event?
How large are households? Choose an American household at
random and let the random variable X be the number of persons
living in the household. If we ignore the few households with more
than seven inhabitants, the probability distribution of X is as follows:
Inhabitants
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Probability
0.25
0.32
0.17
0.15
0.07
0.03
0.01
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(f)
Verify that this is a legitimate probability distribution.
What is P (X ⱖ 5)?
What is P (X ⬎ 5)?
What is P (2 ⬍ X ⱕ 4)?
What is P (X 苷 1)?
Write the event that a randomly chosen household contains more
than two persons in terms of the random variable X . What is the
probability of this event?
235
236
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
4.37
Random numbers. Many random number generators allow users to
specify the range of the random numbers to be produced. Suppose
that you specify that the random number Y can take any value
between 0 and 2. Then the density curve of the outcomes has
constant height between 0 and 2, and height 0 elsewhere.
(a) What is the height of the density curve between 0 and 2? Draw a
graph of the density curve.
(b) Use your graph from (a) and the fact that probability is area
under the curve to find P (Y ⱕ 1).
(c) Find P (0.5 ⬍ Y ⬍ 1.3).
(d) Find P (Y ⱖ 0.8).
4.3 Sampling Distributions
Statistical inference uses sample data to draw conclusions about the entire population. Because good samples are chosen randomly, statistics such as x are
random variables. We can describe the behavior of a sample statistic by a probability model that answers the question “What would happen if we did this
many times?”
Statistical estimation and the law of large numbers
Here is an example that will lead us toward the probability ideas most important for statistical inference.
EXAMPLE 4.10
parameter
Does this wine smell bad?
Sulfur compounds such as dimethyl sulfide (DMS) are sometimes present in
wine. DMS causes “off-odors” in wine, so winemakers want to know the odor threshold, the lowest concentration of DMS that the human nose can detect. Different
people have different thresholds, so we start by asking about the mean threshold
␮ in the population of all adults. The number ␮ is a parameter that describes this
population.
To estimate ␮ , we present tasters with both natural wine and the same wine
spiked with DMS at different concentrations to find the lowest concentration at
which they identify the spiked wine. Here are the odor thresholds (measured in
micrograms of DMS per liter of wine) for 10 randomly chosen subjects:
28 40 28 33 20 31 29 27 17 21
statistic
The mean threshold for these subjects is x ⳱ 27.4. This sample mean is a statistic
that we use to estimate the parameter ␮ , but it is probably not exactly equal to ␮ .
Moreover, we know that a different 10 subjects would give us a different x .
A parameter, such as the mean odor threshold ␮ of all adults, is in practice
a fixed but unknown number. A statistic, such as the mean threshold x of a
random sample of 10 adults, is a random variable. It seems reasonable to use
Sampling Distributions
x to estimate ␮ . An SRS should fairly represent the population, so the mean
x of the sample should be somewhere near the mean ␮ of the population. Of
course, we don’t expect x to be exactly equal to ␮ , and we realize that if we
choose another SRS, the luck of the draw will probably produce a different x .
If x is rarely exactly right and varies from sample to sample, why is it
nonetheless a reasonable estimate of the population mean ␮ ? Here is one answer: if we keep on taking larger and larger samples, the statistic x is guaranteed
to get closer and closer to the parameter ␮ . We have the comfort of knowing
that if we can afford to keep on measuring more subjects, eventually we will
estimate the mean odor threshold of all adults very accurately. This remarkable
fact is called the law of large numbers. It is remarkable because it holds for any
population, not just for some special class such as normal distributions.
LAW OF LARGE NUMBERS
Draw observations at random from any population with finite mean
␮ . As the number of observations drawn increases, the mean x of the
observed values gets closer and closer to the mean ␮ of the population.
The law of large numbers can be proved mathematically starting from the
basic laws of probability. The behavior of x is similar to the idea of probability.
In the long run, the proportion of outcomes taking any value gets close to the
probability of that value, and the average outcome gets close to the population
mean. Figure 4.1 (page 216) shows how proportions approach probability in
one example. Here is an example of how sample means approach the population mean.
EXAMPLE 4.11
The law of large numbers in action
In fact, the distribution of odor thresholds among all adults has mean 25. The
mean ␮ ⳱ 25 is the true value of the parameter we seek to estimate. Figure 4.7
shows how the sample mean x of an SRS drawn from this population changes as
we add more subjects to our sample.
The first subject in Example 4.10 had threshold 28, so the line in Figure 4.7
starts there. The mean for the first two subjects is
x⳱
28 Ⳮ 40
⳱ 34
2
This is the second point on the graph. At first, the graph shows that the mean of
the sample changes as we take more observations. Eventually, however, the mean
of the observations gets close to the population mean ␮ ⳱ 25 and settles down at
that value.
If we started over, again choosing people at random from the population, we
would get a different path from left to right in Figure 4.7. The law of large numbers
says that whatever path we get will always settle down at 25 as we draw more and
more people.
237
238
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
35
34
Mean of first n observations
33
The probability of dying
The behavior of large groups
of people can be as random as
coin tosses. Life insurance is
based on this fact. We can’t
predict whether a specific
person will die next year.
But if we observe millions of
people, deaths are random.
The proportion of men aged
25 to 34 who will die next
year is about 0.0021. This is
the probability that a young
man will die. For women that
age, the probability of death is
about 0.0007. An insurance
company that sells many
policies to people aged 25
to 34 will have to pay off on
about 0.21% of the policies
sold to men and about 0.07%
of the policies sold to women.
32
31
30
29
28
27
26
25
24
23
22
1
5
10
100
500 1000
50
Number of observations, n
5000 10,000
Figure 4.7 The law of large numbers in action: as we take more
observations, the sample mean x always approaches the mean ␮ of the
population.
The law of large numbers is the foundation of such business enterprises as
gambling casinos and insurance companies. The winnings (or losses) of a gambler on a few plays are uncertain—that’s why gambling is exciting. In Figure
4.7, the mean of even 100 observations is not yet very close to ␮ . It is only
in the long run that the mean outcome is predictable. The house plays tens of
thousands of times. So the house, unlike individual gamblers, can count on
the long-run regularity described by the law of large numbers. The average
winnings of the house on tens of thousands of plays will be very close to the
mean of the distribution of winnings. Needless to say, this mean guarantees the
house a profit. That’s why gambling can be a business.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................................
.A.P P. LY. .YO. U.R.K.N O. W. L.E D.G.E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.38
4.39
Figure 4.7 shows how the mean of n observations behaves as we
keep adding more observations to those already in hand. The first 10
observations are given in Example 4.10. Demonstrate that you grasp
the idea of Figure 4.7: find the mean of the first one, then two, three,
four, and five of these observations and plot the successive means
against n. Verify that your plot agrees with the first part of the plot in
Figure 4.7.
Playing the numbers. The numbers racket is a well-entrenched
illegal gambling operation in most large cities. One version works as
Sampling Distributions
follows: you choose one of the 1000 three-digit numbers 000 to 999
and pay your local numbers runner a dollar to enter your bet. Each
day, one three-digit number is chosen at random and pays off $600.
The mean payoff for the population of thousands of bets is ␮ ⳱ 60
cents. Joe makes one bet every day for many years. Explain what the
law of large numbers says about Joe’s results as he keeps on betting.
Sampling distributions
The law of large numbers assures us that if we measure enough subjects, the
statistic x will eventually get very close to the unknown parameter ␮ . But our
study in Example 4.10 had just 10 subjects. What can we say about x from 10
subjects as an estimate of ␮ ? We ask: “What would happen if we took many
samples of 10 subjects from this population?” Here’s how to answer this question:
Take a large number of samples of size 10 from the same population.
Calculate the sample mean x for each sample.
Make a histogram of the values of x .
Examine the distribution displayed in the histogram for shape, center, and
spread, as well as outliers or other deviations.
In practice it is too expensive to take many samples from a large population
such as all adult U.S. residents. But we can imitate many samples by using
software. Using software to imitate chance behavior is called simulation.
䢇
䢇
䢇
䢇
EXAMPLE 4.12
Constructing a sampling distribution
Extensive studies have found that the DMS odor threshold of adults follows
roughly a normal distribution with mean ␮ ⳱ 25 micrograms per liter and standard
deviation ␴ ⳱ 7 micrograms per liter. Figure 4.8 shows this population distribution. With this information, we can simulate many runs of our study with different
subjects drawn at random from the population. Figure 4.9 illustrates the process:
we take 1000 samples of size 10, find the 1000 sample mean thresholds x , and
make a histogram of these 1000 values.
What can we say about the shape, center, and spread of this distribution?
Shape: It looks normal! Detailed examination confirms that the
distribution of x from many samples does have a distribution that is very
close to normal.
Center: The mean of the 1000 x ’s is 25.073. That is, the distribution is
centered very close to the population mean ␮ ⳱ 25.
Spread: The standard deviation of the 1000 x ’s is 2.191, notably smaller
than the standard deviation ␴ ⳱ 7 of the population of individual
subjects.
The histogram in Figure 4.9 shows how x would behave if we drew many
samples. It displays the sampling distribution of the statistic x .
䢇
䢇
䢇
simulation
239
240
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
σ=7
0
10
20
30
40
50
Odor threshold for one subject
Figure 4.8 The distribution of odor threshold for DMS in wine in the
population of all adults. This is also the distribution of the DMS threshold
for one adult chosen at random.
150
SRS o
Population
µ = 25
σ =7
e 10
x
ize 10
x
f siz
SRS of s
SRS of size 10
100
x
50
0
18
20
22
24
26
28
Mean odor threshold for 10 subjects
Figure 4.9 The idea of a
sampling distribution: take
many samples from the same
population, collect the x’s
from all the samples, and
display the distribution of the
x’s. The histogram here shows
the results of 1000 samples.
30
32
Sampling Distributions
SAMPLING DISTRIBUTION
The sampling distribution of a statistic is the distribution of values
taken by the statistic in all possible samples of the same size from the
same population.
Strictly speaking, the sampling distribution is the ideal pattern that would
emerge if we looked at all possible samples of size 10 from our population. A
distribution obtained from a fixed number of trials, like the 1000 trials in Figure
4.9, is only an approximation to the sampling distribution. One of the uses of
probability theory in statistics is to obtain exact sampling distributions without
simulation. The interpretation of a sampling distribution is the same, however,
whether we obtain it by simulation or by the mathematics of probability.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................................
.A.P P. LY. .YO. U.R.K.N O. W. L.E D.G.E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.40
Generating a sampling distribution. Let us illustrate the idea of a
sampling distribution in the case of a very small sample from a very
small population. The population is the scores of 10 students on an
exam:
Student
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Score
82
62
80
58
72
73
65
66
74
62
The parameter of interest is the mean score ␮ in this population. The
sample is an SRS of size n ⳱ 4 drawn from the population. Because
the students are labeled 0 to 9, a single random digit from Table B
chooses one student for the sample.
(a) Find the mean of the 10 scores in the population. This is the
population mean ␮ .
(b) Use Table B to draw an SRS of size 4 from this population. Write
the four scores in your sample and calculate the mean x of the
sample scores. This statistic is an estimate of ␮ .
(c) Repeat this process 10 times using different parts of Table B.
Make a histogram of the 10 values of x . You are constructing the
sampling distribution of x . Is the center of your histogram close
to ␮ ?
The mean and the standard deviation of x
Figure 4.9 suggests that when we choose many SRSs from a population, the
sampling distribution of the sample means is centered at the mean of the
241
242
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
original population and less spread out than the distribution of individual observations. Here are the full facts.
MEAN AND STANDARD DEVIATION OF A SAMPLE MEAN3
Suppose that x is the mean of an SRS of size n drawn from a large population with mean ␮ and standard deviation ␴ . Then the mean of the
sampling distribution of x is ␮ and its standard deviation is ␴ 冫冪n.
Both the mean and the standard deviation of the sampling distribution of x
have important implications for statistical inference.
The mean of the statistic x is always the same as the mean ␮ of the
population. The sampling distribution of x is centered at ␮ . In repeated
sampling, x will sometimes fall above the true value of the parameter ␮
and sometimes below, but there is no systematic tendency to overestimate
or underestimate the parameter. This makes the idea of lack of bias in the
sense of “no favoritism” more precise. Because the mean of x is equal to ␮ ,
we say that the statistic x is an unbiased estimator of the parameter ␮ .
An unbiased estimator is “correct on the average” in many samples. How
close the estimator falls to the parameter in most samples is determined
by the spread of the sampling distribution. If individual observations have
standard deviation ␴ , then sample means x from samples of size n have
standard deviation ␴ 冫冪n. Averages are less variable than individual
䢇
unbiased estimator
䢇
Means x of 10 subjects
σ
= 2.136
10
Observations on 1 subject
σ=7
0
10
20
30
40
50
Figure 4.10 The distribution of single observations compared with the
distribution of the means x of 10 observations. Averages are less variable
than individual observations.
Sampling Distributions
observations. Figure 4.10 compares the distribution of single observations
(the population distribution) for odor thresholds with the sampling
distribution of the means x of 10 observations.
Not only is the standard deviation of the distribution of x smaller than the
standard deviation of individual observations, but it gets smaller as we take
larger samples. The results of large samples are less variable than the results of small samples. If n is large, the standard deviation of x is small and
almost all samples will give values of x that lie very close to the true parameter
␮ . That is, the sample mean from a large sample can be trusted to estimate the
population mean accurately. Notice, however, that the standard deviation of
the sampling distribution gets smaller only at the rate 冪n. To cut the standard
deviation of x in half, we must take four times as many observations, not just
twice as many.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................................
.A.P P. LY. .YO. U.R.K.N O. W. L.E D.G.E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.41
4.42
Measurements in the lab. Juan makes a measurement in a
chemistry laboratory and records the result in his lab report. The
standard deviation of students’ lab measurements is ␴ ⳱ 10
milligrams. Juan repeats the measurement 3 times and records the
mean x of his 3 measurements.
(a) What is the standard deviation of Juan’s mean result? (That is, if
Juan kept on making 3 measurements and averaging them, what
would be the standard deviation of all his x ’s?)
(b) How many times must Juan repeat the measurement to reduce the
standard deviation of x to 5? Explain to someone who knows
no statistics the advantage of reporting the average of several
measurements rather than the result of a single measurement.
Measuring blood cholesterol. A study of the health of teenagers
plans to measure the blood cholesterol level of an SRS of youth of
ages 13 to 16 years. The researchers will report the mean x from
their sample as an estimate of the mean cholesterol level ␮ in this
population.
(a) Explain to someone who knows no statistics what it means to say
that x is an “unbiased” estimator of ␮ .
(b) The sample result x is an unbiased estimator of the population
truth ␮ no matter what size SRS the study chooses. Explain to
someone who knows no statistics why a large sample gives more
trustworthy results than a small sample.
The central limit theorem
We have described the center and spread of the probability distribution of a
sample mean x , but not its shape. The shape of the distribution of x depends
243
244
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
on the shape of the population distribution. Here is one important case: if the
population distribution is normal, then so is the distribution of the sample
mean.
SAMPLING DISTRIBUTION OF A SAMPLE MEAN
If a population has the N (␮, ␴ ) distribution, then the sample mean x
of n independent observations has the N (␮, ␴ 冫冪n) distribution.
We already knew the mean and standard deviation of the sampling distribution. All that we have added now is the normal shape. Figure 4.10 illustrates these facts in the case of measuring odor thresholds. Odor thresholds
follow a normal distribution in the population of all adults, so the sampling
distribution of the mean threshold for 10 adults also follows a normal distribution.
What happens when the population distribution is not normal? As the sample size increases, the distribution of x changes shape: it looks less like that of
the population and more like a normal distribution. When the sample is large
enough, the distribution of x is very close to normal. This is true no matter
what shape the population distribution has, as long as the population has a
finite standard deviation ␴ . This famous fact of probability theory is called the
central limit theorem. It is much more useful than the fact that the distribution
of x is exactly normal if the population is exactly normal.
Politically correct
In 1950, the Russian
mathematician B. V. Gnedenko
(1912–) wrote a text on
The Theory of Probability
that was widely used in the
United States and elsewhere.
The introduction contains
a mystifying paragraph
that begins, “We note that
the entire development of
probability theory shows
evidence of how its concepts
and ideas were crystallized
in a severe struggle between
materialistic and idealistic
conceptions.” It turns out
that “materialistic” is jargon
for “Marxist-Leninist.” It was
good for the health of Russian
scientists in the Stalin era to
add such statements to their
books.
CENTRAL LIMIT THEOREM
Draw an SRS of size n from any population with mean ␮ and finite
standard deviation ␴ . When n is large, the sampling distribution of
the sample mean x is approximately normal:
x is approximately N (␮, ␴ 冫冪n)
More generally, the central limit theorem says that the distribution of a sum
or average of many small random quantities is close to normal. This is true
even if the quantities are not independent (as long as they are not too highly
correlated) and even if they have different distributions (as long as no one random quantity is so large that it dominates the others). The central limit theorem
suggests why the normal distributions are common models for observed data.
Any variable that is a sum of many small influences will have approximately a
normal distribution.
How large a sample size n is needed for x to be close to normal depends on
the population distribution. More observations are required if the shape of the
population distribution is far from normal.
Sampling Distributions
245
Figure 4.11 The central
0
1
0
1
(a)
0
1
(b)
0
(c)
EXAMPLE 4.13
1
(d)
The central limit theorem in action
Figure 4.11 shows how the central limit theorem works for a very nonnormal
population. Figure 4.11(a) displays the density curve of a single observation, that
is, of the population. The distribution is strongly right-skewed, and the most probable outcomes are near 0. The mean ␮ of this distribution is 1, and its standard
deviation ␴ is also 1. This particular distribution is called an exponential distribution. Exponential distributions are used as models for the lifetime in service
of electronic components and for the time required to serve a customer or repair
a machine.
Figures 4.11(b), (c), and (d) are the density curves of the sample means of 2, 10,
and 25 observations from this population. As n increases, the shape becomes more
normal. The mean remains at ␮ ⳱ 1, and the standard deviation decreases, taking
the value 1冫冪n. The density curve for 10 observations is still somewhat skewed to
the right but already resembles a normal curve having ␮ ⳱ 1 and ␴ ⳱ 1冫冪10 ⳱
0.32. The density curve for n ⳱ 25 is yet more normal. The contrast between the
shapes of the population distribution and of the distribution of the mean of 10 or
25 observations is striking.
The central limit theorem allows us to use normal probability calculations
to answer questions about sample means from many observations even when
the population distribution is not normal.
limit theorem in action:
the distribution of sample
means x from a strongly
nonnormal population
becomes more normal as the
sample size increases. (a) The
distribution of one observation.
(b) The distribution of
x for 2 observations. (c)
The distribution of x for
10 observations. (d) The
distribution of x for 25
observations.
246
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
EXAMPLE 4.14
Maintaining air conditioners
The time X that a technician requires to perform preventive maintenance on
an air-conditioning unit is governed by the exponential distribution whose density
curve appears in Figure 4.11(a). The mean time is ␮ ⳱ 1 hour and the standard
deviation is ␴ ⳱ 1 hour. Your company operates 70 of these units. What is the
probability that their average maintenance time exceeds 50 minutes?
The central limit theorem says that the sample mean time x (in hours) spent
working on 70 units has approximately the normal distribution with mean equal to
the population mean ␮ ⳱ 1 hour and standard deviation
␴
冪70
⳱
1
冪70
⳱ 0.12 hour
The distribution of x is therefore approximately N (1, 0.12). This normal curve is
the solid curve in Figure 4.12.
Because 50 minutes is 50/60 of an hour, or 0.83 hour, the probability we want
is P (x ⬎ 0.83). A normal distribution calculation gives this probability as 0.9222.
This is the area to the right of 0.83 under the solid normal curve in Figure 4.12.
Using more mathematics, we could start with the exponential distribution and
find the actual density curve of x for 70 observations. This is the dashed curve
in Figure 4.12. You can see that the solid normal curve is a good approximation.
The exactly correct probability is the area under the dashed density curve. It is
0.9294. The central limit theorem normal approximation is off by only about
0.007.
0.83
1
Figure 4.12 The exact distribution (dashed) and the normal approximation
from the central limit theorem (solid) for the average time needed to
maintain an air conditioner, for Example 4.14.
Sampling Distributions
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................................
.A.P P. LY. .YO. U.R.K.N O. W. L.E D.G.E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.43
4.44
4.45
ACT scores. The scores of students on the ACT college entrance
examination in a recent year had the normal distribution with mean
␮ ⳱ 18.6 and standard deviation ␴ ⳱ 5.9.
(a) What is the probability that a single student randomly chosen
from all those taking the test scores 21 or higher?
(b) Now take an SRS of 50 students who took the test. What are the
mean and standard deviation of the sample mean score x of these
50 students?
(c) What is the probability that the mean score x of these students is
21 or higher?
Flaws in carpets. The number of flaws per square yard in a type
of carpet material varies with mean 1.6 flaws per square yard and
standard deviation 1.2 flaws per square yard. The population
distribution cannot be normal, because a count takes only wholenumber values. An inspector samples 200 square yards of the
material, records the number of flaws found in each square yard, and
calculates x , the mean number of flaws per square yard inspected.
Use the central limit theorem to find the approximate probability that
the mean number of flaws exceeds 2 per square yard.
Returns on stocks. The distribution of annual returns on common
stocks is roughly symmetric, but extreme observations are more
frequent than in a normal distribution. Because the distribution
is not strongly nonnormal, the mean return over even a moderate
number of years is close to normal. In the long run, annual real
returns on common stocks have varied with mean about 9% and
standard deviation about 28%. Andrew plans to retire in 45 years and
is considering investing in stocks. What is the probability (assuming
that the past pattern of variation continues) that the mean annual
return on common stocks over the next 45 years will exceed 15%?
What is the probability that the mean return will be less than 5%?
SECTION 4.3
S u m m a r y
When we want information about the population mean ␮ for some
variable, we often take an SRS and use the sample mean x to estimate the
unknown parameter ␮ .
The law of large numbers states that the actually observed mean
outcome x must approach the mean ␮ of the population as the number of
observations increases.
The sampling distribution of x describes how the statistic x varies in all
possible samples of the same size from the same population.
247
248
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
The mean of the sampling distribution is ␮ , so that x is an unbiased
estimator of ␮ .
The standard deviation of the sampling distribution of x is ␴ 冫冪n for an
SRS of size n if the population has standard deviation ␴ . That is, averages are
less variable than individual observations.
If the population has a normal distribution, so does x .
The central limit theorem states that for large n the sampling
distribution of x is approximately normal for any population with finite
standard deviation ␴ . That is, averages are more normal than individual
observations. We can use the N (␮, ␴ 冫冪n) distribution to calculate
approximate probabilities for events involving x .
SECTION 4.3
4.46
4.47
E x e r c i s e s
Roulette. A roulette wheel has 38 slots, of which 18 are black, 18
are red, and 2 are green. When the wheel is spun, the ball is equally
likely to come to rest in any of the slots. One of the simplest wagers
chooses red or black. A bet of $1 on red returns $2 if the ball lands
in a red slot. Otherwise, the player loses his dollar. When gamblers
bet on red or black, the two green slots belong to the house. Because
the probability of winning $2 is 18/38, the mean payoff from a $1 bet
is twice 18/38, or 94.7 cents. Explain what the law of large numbers
tells us about what will happen if a gambler makes a large number of
bets on red.
Generating a sampling distribution. Table 1.9 (page 72) gives the
survival times of 72 guinea pigs in a medical experiment. Consider
these 72 animals to be the population of interest.
(a) Make a histogram of the 72 survival times. This is the population
distribution. It is strongly skewed to the right.
(b) Find the mean of the 72 survival times. This is the population
mean ␮ . Mark ␮ on the x axis of your histogram.
(c) Label the members of the population 01 to 72 and use Table B to
choose an SRS of size n ⳱ 12. What is the mean survival time x
for your sample? Mark the value of x with a point on the axis of
your histogram from (a).
(d) Choose four more SRSs of size 12, using different parts of
Table B. Find x for each sample and mark the values on the axis
of your histogram from (a). Would you be surprised if all five x ’s
fell on the same side of ␮ ? Why?
(e) If you chose a large number of SRSs of size 12 from this
population and made a histogram of the x -values, where would
you expect the center of this sampling distribution to lie?
Sampling Distributions
4.48
Dust in coal mines. A laboratory weighs filters from a coal mine
to measure the amount of dust in the mine atmosphere. Repeated
measurements of the weight of dust on the same filter vary normally
with standard deviation ␴ ⳱ 0.08 milligram (mg) because the
weighing is not perfectly precise. The dust on a particular filter
actually weighs 123 mg. Repeated weighings will then have the
normal distribution with mean 123 mg and standard deviation
0.08 mg.
(a) The laboratory reports the mean of 3 weighings. What is the
distribution of this mean?
(b) What is the probability that the laboratory reports a weight of
124 mg or higher for this filter?
4.49
An opinion poll. An SRS of 400 American adults is asked, “What do
you think is the most serious problem facing our schools?” Suppose
that in fact 30% of all adults would answer “drugs” if asked this
question. The proportion X of the sample who answer “drugs”
will vary in repeated sampling. In fact, we can assign probabilities
to values of X using the normal density curve with mean 0.3
and standard deviation 0.023. Use this density curve to find the
probabilities of the following events:
(a) At least half of the sample believes that drugs are the schools’
most serious problem.
(b) Less than 25% of the sample believes that drugs are the most
serious problem.
(c) The sample proportion is between 0.25 and 0.35.
4.50
Making auto parts. An automatic grinding machine in an auto parts
plant prepares axles with a target diameter ␮ ⳱ 40.125 millimeters
(mm). The machine has some variability, so the standard deviation of
the diameters is ␴ ⳱ 0.002 mm. A sample of 4 axles is inspected
each hour for process control purposes, and records are kept of
the sample mean diameter. What will be the mean and standard
deviation of the numbers recorded?
4.51
Bottling cola. A bottling company uses a filling machine to fill
plastic bottles with cola. The bottles are supposed to contain 300
milliliters (ml). In fact, the contents vary according to a normal distribution with mean ␮ ⳱ 298 ml and standard deviation ␴ ⳱ 3 ml.
(a) What is the probability that an individual bottle contains less
than 295 ml?
(b) What is the probability that the mean contents of the bottles in a
six-pack is less than 295 ml?
4.52
Potassium in the blood. Judy’s doctor is concerned that she may
suffer from hypokalemia (low potassium in the blood). There is
249
250
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
4.53
4.54
4.55
variation both in the actual potassium level and in the blood test
that measures the level. Judy’s measured potassium level varies
according to the normal distribution with ␮ ⳱ 3.8 and ␴ ⳱ 0.2.
A patient is classified as hypokalemic if the potassium level is
below 3.5.
(a) If a single potassium measurement is made, what is the
probability that Judy is diagnosed as hypokalemic?
(b) If measurements are made instead on 4 separate days and the
mean result is compared with the criterion 3.5, what is the
probability that Judy is diagnosed as hypokalemic?
Auto accidents. The number of accidents per week at a hazardous
intersection varies with mean 2.2 and standard deviation 1.4. This
distribution takes only whole-number values, so it is certainly not
normal.
(a) Let x be the mean number of accidents per week at the
intersection during a year (52 weeks). What is the approximate
distribution of x according to the central limit theorem?
(b) What is the approximate probability that x is less than 2?
(c) What is the approximate probability that there are fewer than 100
accidents at the intersection in a year? (Hint: Restate this event in
terms of x .)
Pollutants in auto exhausts. The level of nitrogen oxides (NOX) in
the exhaust of a particular car model varies with mean 0.9 grams per
mile (g/mi) and standard deviation 0.15 g/mi. A company has 125
cars of this model in its fleet.
(a) What is the approximate distribution of the mean NOX emission
level x for these cars?
(b) What is the level L such that the probability that x is greater
than L is only 0.01? (Hint: This requires a backward normal
calculation. See page 61 of Chapter 1 if you need to review.)
Testing kindergarten children. Children in kindergarten are sometimes given the Ravin Progressive Matrices Test (RPMT) to assess their
readiness for learning. Experience at Southwark Elementary School
suggests that the RPMT scores for its kindergarten pupils have mean
13.6 and standard deviation 3.1. The distribution is close to normal.
Mr. Lavin has 22 children in his kindergarten class this year. He
suspects that their RPMT scores will be unusually low because the
test was interrupted by a fire drill. To check this suspicion, he wants
to find the level L such that there is probability only 0.05 that the
mean score of 22 children falls below L when the usual Southwark
distribution remains true. What is the value of L? (Hint: This
requires a backward normal calculation. See page 61 of Chapter 1 if
you need to review.)
Statistics in Summary
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..............................
. STAT
. . .I .ST.I .C S. .I N. S. U.M. M. A. RY
................
This chapter lays the foundations for the study of statistical inference. Statistical
inference uses data to draw conclusions about the population or process from
which the data come. What is special about inference is that the conclusions
include a statement, in the language of probability, about how reliable they
are. The statement gives a probability that answers the question “What would
happen if I used this method very many times?” The probabilities we need
come from the sampling distributions of sample statistics.
Sampling distributions are the key to understanding statistical inference.
The Statistics in Summary figure on the next page summarizes the facts about
the sampling distribution of x in a way that reminds us of the big idea of a
sampling distribution. Keep taking random samples of size n from a population
with mean ␮ . Find the sample mean x for each sample. Collect all the x ’s and
display their distribution. That’s the sampling distribution of x . Keep this figure
in mind as you go forward.
To think more effectively about sampling distributions, we use the language
of probability. Probability, the mathematics that describes randomness, is important in many areas of study. Here, we concentrate on informal probability
as the conceptual foundation for statistical inference. Because random samples
and randomized comparative experiments use chance, their results vary according to the laws of probability. Here is a review list of the most important
things you should be able to do after studying this chapter.
A. PROBABILITY
1. Recognize that some phenomena are random. Probability describes the
long-run regularity of random phenomena.
2. Understand that the probability of an event is the proportion of times the
event occurs in very many repetitions of a random phenomenon. Use the
idea of probability as long-run proportion to think about probability.
3. Use basic probability facts to detect illegitimate assignments of
probability: Any probability must be a number between 0 and 1, and the
total probability assigned to all possible outcomes must be 1.
4. Use basic probability facts to find the probabilities of events that are
formed from other events: The probability that an event does not occur
is 1 minus its probability. If two events are disjoint, the probability that
one or the other occurs is the sum of their individual probabilities.
5. Find probabilities of events in a finite sample space by adding the
probabilities of their outcomes. Find probabilities of events as areas under
a density curve.
6. Use the notation of random variables to make compact statements about
random outcomes, such as P (x ⱕ 4) ⳱ 0.3. Be able to read such
statements.
251
252
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
STATISTICS IN SUMMARY
Approximate Sampling Distribution of x
σ
√n
SRS s
Population
Mean µ
Std. dev. σ
ize n
x
n
x
SRS size
SRS size n
µ
x
values of —
x
B. SAMPLING DISTRIBUTIONS
1. Identify parameters and statistics in a sample or experiment.
2. Recognize the fact of sampling variability: a statistic will take different
values when you repeat a sample or experiment.
3. Interpret a sampling distribution as describing the values taken by a
statistic in all possible repetitions of a sample or experiment under the
same conditions.
4. Interpret the sampling distribution of a statistic as describing the
probabilities of its possible values.
C. THE SAMPLING DISTRIBUTION OF A SAMPLE MEAN
1. Recognize when a problem involves the mean x of a sample. Understand
that x estimates the mean ␮ of the population from which the sample is
drawn.
2. Use the law of large numbers to describe the behavior of x as the size of
the sample increases.
3. Find the mean and standard deviation of a sample mean x from an SRS of
size n when the mean ␮ and standard deviation ␴ of the population are
known.
4. Understand that x is an unbiased estimator of ␮ and that the variability of
x about its mean ␮ gets smaller as the sample size increases.
5. Understand that x has approximately a normal distribution when the
sample is large (central limit theorem). Use this normal distribution to
calculate probabilities that concern x .
Review Exercises
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..............
.C.HAPTER
. . . .4. .R .e .v. i .e.w. . E. .x .e .r .c. i .s .e. s. . . . . . .
4.56
4.57
4.58
4.59
4.60
4.61
A random sample of female college students has a mean height of
64.5 inches, which is greater than the 63-inch mean height of all
adult American women. Is each of the bold numbers a parameter or a
statistic?
A sample of students of high academic ability under 13 years of age
was given the SAT mathematics examination, which is usually taken
by high school seniors. The mean score for the females in the sample
was 386, whereas the mean score of the males was 416. Is each of the
bold numbers a parameter or a statistic?
If a carefully made die is rolled once, it is reasonable to assign
probability 1/6 to each of the six faces. What is the probability of
rolling a number less than 3?
Exactly one of Brown, Chavez, and Williams will be promoted to
partner in the law firm that employs them all. Brown thinks that she
has probability 0.25 of winning the promotion and that Williams has
probability 0.2. What probability does Brown assign to the outcome
that Chavez is the one promoted?
Predicting the ACC champion. Las Vegas Zeke, when asked to
predict the Atlantic Coast Conference basketball champion, follows
the modern practice of giving probabilistic predictions. He says,
“North Carolina’s probability of winning is twice Duke’s. North
Carolina State and Virginia each have probability 0.1 of winning, but
Duke’s probability is three times that. Nobody else has a chance.” Has
Zeke given a legitimate assignment of probabilities to the eight teams
in the conference? Explain your answer.
How far do fifth graders go in school? A study of education
followed a large group of fifth-grade children to see how many years
of school they eventually completed. Let X be the highest year of
school that a randomly chosen fifth grader completes. (Students who
go on to college are included in the outcome X ⳱ 12.) The study
found this probability distribution for X :
Years
Probability
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
0.010 0.007 0.007 0.013 0.032 0.068 0.070 0.041 0.752
(a) What percent of fifth graders eventually finished twelfth grade?
(b) Check that this is a legitimate probability distribution.
(c) Find P (X ⱖ 6). (Be careful: the event “X ⱖ 6” includes the
value 6.)
253
254
CHAPTER 4
.
Probability and Sampling Distributions
4.62
(d) Find P (X ⬎ 6).
(e) What values of X make up the event “the student completed at
least one year of high school”? (High school begins with the ninth
grade.) What is the probability of this event?
Classifying occupations. Choose an American worker at random
and classify his or her occupation into one of the following classes.
These classes are used in government employment data.
A
B
C
D
E
F
Managerial and professional
Technical, sales, administrative support
Service occupations
Precision production, craft, and repair
Operators, fabricators, and laborers
Farming, forestry, and fishing
The table below gives the probabilities that a randomly chosen
worker falls into each of 12 sex-by-occupation classes:
Class
Male
Female
4.63
A
B
C
D
E
F
0.14
0.09
0.11
0.20
0.06
0.08
0.11
0.01
0.12
0.04
0.03
0.01
(a) Verify that this is a legitimate assignment of probabilities to these
outcomes.
(b) What is the probability that the worker is female?
(c) What is the probability that the worker is not engaged in farming,
forestry, or fishing?
(d) Classes D and E include most mechanical and factory jobs. What
is the probability that the worker holds a job in one of these
classes?
(e) What is the probability that the worker does not hold a job in
Classes D or E?
An IQ test. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) is a
common “IQ test” for adults. The distribution of WAIS scores for
persons over 16 years of age is approximately normal with mean 100
and standard deviation 15.
(a) What is the probability that a randomly chosen individual has a
WAIS score of 105 or higher?
(b) What are the mean and standard deviation of the average WAIS
score x for an SRS of 60 people?
Review Exercises
4.64
4.65
(c) What is the probability that the average WAIS score of an SRS of
60 people is 105 or higher?
(d) Would your answers to any of (a), (b), or (c) be affected if
the distribution of WAIS scores in the adult population were
distinctly nonnormal?
Weights of eggs. The weight of the eggs produced by a certain breed
of hen is normally distributed with mean 65 grams (g) and standard
deviation 5 g. Think of cartons of such eggs as SRSs of size 12 from
the population of all eggs. What is the probability that the weight of a
carton falls between 750 g and 825 g?
How many people in a car? A study of rush-hour traffic in San
Francisco counts the number of people in each car entering a freeway
at a suburban interchange. Suppose that this count has mean 1.5 and
standard deviation 0.75 in the population of all cars that enter at this
interchange during rush hours.
(a) Could the exact distribution of the count be normal? Why or why
not?
(b) Traffic engineers estimate that the capacity of the interchange is
700 cars per hour. According to the central limit theorem, what is
the approximate distribution of the mean number of persons x in
700 randomly selected cars at this interchange?
(c) What is the probability that 700 cars will carry more than 1075
people? (Hint: Restate this event in terms of the mean number of
people x per car.)
255