AP Exam Practice Page 50 of 67 Sampling Distributions

AP Exam Practice: Sampling Distributions

2007 AP® STATISTICS FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS 3. Big Town Fisheries recently stocked a new lake in a city park with 2,000 fish of various sizes. The distribution of the lengths of these fish is approximately normal. (a) Big Town Fisheries claims that the mean length of the fish is 8 inches. If the claim is true, which of the following would be more likely? • A random sample of 15 fish having a mean length that is greater than 10 inches or • A random sample of 50 fish having a mean length that is greater than 10 inches Justify your answer. (b) Suppose the standard deviation of the sampling distribution of the sample mean for random samples of size 50 is 0.3 inch. If the mean length of the fish is 8 inches, use the normal distribution to compute the probability that a random sample of 50 fish will have a mean length less than 7.5 inches.

AP Exam Practice Page 51 of 67 Sampling Distributions

2010 AP® STATISTICS FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS 2. A local radio station plays 40 rock-and-roll songs during each 4-hour show. The program director at the station

needs to know the total amount of airtime for the 40 songs so that time can also be programmed during the show for news and advertisements. The distribution of the lengths of rock-and-roll songs, in minutes, is roughly symmetric with a mean length of 3.9 minutes and a standard deviation of 1.1 minutes.

(a) Describe the sampling distribution of the sample mean song lengths for random samples of 40 rock-and-roll

songs. (b) If the program manager schedules 80 minutes of news and advertisements for the 4-hour (240-minute) show,

only 160 minutes are available for music. Approximately what is the probability that the total amount of time needed to play 40 randomly selected rock-and-roll songs exceeds the available airtime?

AP Exam Practice Page 52 of 67 Sampling Distributions

2004B #3: Trains carry bauxite ore from a mine in Canada to an aluminum processing plant in northern New York state in hopper cars. Filling equipment is used to load ore into the hopper cars. When functioning properly, the actual weights of ore loaded into each car by the filling equipment at the mine are approximately normally distributed with a mean of 70 tons and a standard deviation of 0.9 ton. If the mean is greater than 70 tons, the loading mechanism is overfilling. (a) If the filling equipment is functioning properly, what is the probability that the weight of the ore in a randomly selected car will be 70.7 tons or more? Show your work. (b) Suppose that the weight of ore in a randomly selected car is 70.7 tons. Would that fact make you suspect that the loading mechanism is overfilling the cars? Justify your answer. (c) If the filling equipment is functioning properly, what is the probability that a random sample of 10 cars will have a mean ore of 70.7 tons or more? Show your work. (d) Based on your answer in part (c), if a random sample of 10 cars had a mean ore weight of 70.7 tons, would you suspect that the loading mechanism was overfilling the cars? Justify your answer.

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2009 AP® STATISTICS FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS

AP Exam Practice Page 54 of 67 Sampling Distributions

2008 (Form B) AP® STATISTICS FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS 2. Four different statistics have been proposed as estimators of a population parameter. To investigate the

behavior of these estimators, 500 random samples are selected from a known population and each statistic is calculated for each sample. The true value of the population parameter is 75. The graphs below show the distribution of values for each statistic.

(a) Which of the statistics appear to be unbiased estimators of the population parameter? How can you tell? (b) Which of statistics A or B would be a better estimator of the population parameter? Explain your choice.

(c) Which of statistics C or D would be a better estimator of the population parameter?

Explain your choice.

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ANSWERS: AP Statistics Exam Practice: Sampling Distributions 2007 #3 (Big Town Fisheries)

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2010 #2 (Radio Station)

AP Exam Practice Page 57 of 67 Sampling Distributions

2009 #2 (Tire Manufacturer)

2008B #2 (Four Histograms)

a) A, C and D are unbiased since their means are all ≈ 75. b) A since it is an unbiased estimator (its mean is ≈75). Statistic B is biased (its

mean is ≈85) c) C is better. Both C and D are unbiased (centered ≈75), but C has less variability

than D.

AP Exam Practice Page 58 of 67 Inference

AP Exam Practice: Inference 2006B #2

AP Exam Practice Page 59 of 67 Inference

2005 #4

AP Exam Practice Page 60 of 67 Inference

2004 #6:

Deeper question:

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2006 #4

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1999 #6ab: Guessing Coins

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AP Exam Practice Page 64 of 67 Inference

2008 #5

AP Exam Practice Page 65 of 67 Inference

AP Exam Practice Page 66 of 67 Inference

2012 #5: Windmills

(a) Use the computer output above to determine the equation of the least squares regression line. Identify all variables used in the equation. (b) How much more electricity would the windmill be expected to produce on a day when the wind velocity is 25 mph than on a day when the wind velocity is 15 mph? Show how you arrived at your answer. (c) What proportion of the variation in electricity production is explained by its linear relationship with wind velocity? (d) Is there statistically convincing evidence that electricity production by the windmill is related to wind velocity? Explain.

AP Exam Practice Page 67 of 67 Inference

2015 #2 Restaurant Discounts 2. To increase business, the owner of a restaurant is running a promotion in which a customer’s bill can be

randomly selected to receive a discount. When a customer’s bill is printed, a program in the cash register randomly determines whether the customer will receive a discount on the bill. The program was written to generate a discount with a probability of 0.2, that is, giving 20 percent of the bills a discount in the long run. However, the owner is concerned that the program has a mistake that results in the program not generating the intended long-run proportion of 0.2.

The owner selected a random sample of bills and found that only 15 percent of them received discounts. A confidence interval for p, the proportion of bills that will receive a discount in the long run, is 0.15 ± 0.06. All conditions for inference were met.

(a) Consider the confidence interval 0.15 ± 0.06.

(i) Does the confidence interval provide convincing statistical evidence that the program is not working as intended? Justify your answer.

(ii) Does the confidence interval provide convincing statistical evidence that the program generates the

discount with a probability of 0.2 ? Justify your answer.

A second random sample of bills was taken that was four times the size of the original sample. In the second sample 15 percent of the bills received the discount.

(b) Determine the value of the margin of error based on the second sample of bills that would be used to compute an interval for p with the same confidence level as that of the original interval. (c) Based on the margin of error in part (b) that was obtained from the second sample, what do you conclude

about whether the program is working as intended? Justify your answer.