Practice Questions – Confidence Interval
1) A medical research worker intends to use the mean of a random sample of size 120 to
estimate the mean blood pressure of women is 141.8mm of mercury. Based on experience
he knows that the population variance is 10.5mm of mercury.
a) Find the standard error.
b) Construct a 99% confidence interval for mean blood pressure of women.
2) To estimate the average time required for certain repairs, an automobile manufacturer had
40 mechanics. If it took them on the average 24.05min with standard deviation of
2.68min. Find the 95% confidence interval of mean time required to perform the given
repairs.
3) In a study of television viewing habits, it is desired to estimate the average number of
hours that teenagers spend watching per week. If it is reasonable to assume that
population standard deviation is 3.2hours, how large a sample is needed so that it will be
possible to assert with 95% confidence that the margin of error is less than 20min.
4) In a random sample of 300 persons eating lunch at a department store cafeteria, only 102
had dessert. Construct the 99% confidence interval for the true proportion.
5) A food inspector examining 12 jars of a certain brand of peanut butter, obtained the
following percentages of impurities.
2.3 1.9 2.1 2.8 2.3 3.6 1.4 1.8 2.1 3.2 2.0 1.9
Construct a 90% confidence interval for the variance of the population sampled, that is
for the percentage of impurities in the given brand of peanut butter.
6) Twelve randomly selected mature citrus trees of one variety have a mean height of 13.8
feet with a standard deviation of 1.2 feet, and 15 randomly selected mature citrus trees of
another variety have a mean height of 12.9 feet with a standard deviation of 1.5 feet.
Assuming that the random samples were selected from normal populations with equal
variances, construct a 95% confidence interval for the difference between the true average
heights of the two kinds of citrus trees.
7) A study of two kinds of photocopying equipment shows that 61 failures of the first kind
of equipment took on average 80.7 min. to repair with a standard deviation of 19.4 min,
whereas 61 failures of the second kind of equipment took on the average 88.1 min to
repair with a standard deviation of 18.8 min. Find 99% confidence interval for the
difference between the true average amounts of time it takes to repair failures of the two
kinds of photocopying equipment.
8) Among 500 marriage license applications chosen at random in a given year, there were 48
in which the women was at least one year older than the man, and among 400 marriage
license applications chosen at random six years later, there were 68 in which the women
was at least one year older than the man. Construct a 99% confidence interval for the
difference between the corresponding true proportions of marriage license applications in
which the women was at least one year older than the man.
9) The following are the heat-producing capacities of coal from two mines (in millions of
calories per ton).
Mine A 8500 8330 8480 7960 8030
Mine B 7710 7890 7920 8270 7860
Assuming that the data constitute independent random samples from normal population,
construct a 90% confidence interval for the ratio of the variances of the two populations
sampled.
10) In a random sample of visitors to a famous tourist attraction, 84 of 250 men and 156 of
250 women bought souvenirs. Construct 95% confidence interval for the difference
between the true proportions of men and women who buy souvenirs at this tourist
attraction.
