As part of a study of the development of the thymus gland, researchers weighed the glands of five chick embryos after 14 days of incubation. The thymus weights (mg) were as follows:

41.5, 39.2, 41.2, 42.3, 41.3.

Assume that thymus gland weight of chick embryos follow normal distribution. If you were to construct a 95 percent confidence interval for the mean thymus gland weight, it would take the form:

(sample mean) +/- t.quantile * (standard error of sample mean)

What is the correct value of t.quantile for a 95 percent confidence interval in this study?

A. 2.1319

B. 2.7764

C. 2.5706

D. 1.96

E. 2.0150

Respuesta :

Answer:

Since the Confidence is 0.95 or 95%, the value of [tex]\alpha=0.05[/tex] and [tex]\alpha/2 =0.025[/tex], and we can use excel, a calculator or a table to find the critical value. The excel command would be: "=-T.INV(0.025,4)".And we see that [tex]t_{\alpha/2}=2.7764[/tex]

So the correct option would be:

B. 2.7764

Step-by-step explanation:

Previous concepts

A confidence interval is "a range of values that’s likely to include a population value with a certain degree of confidence. It is often expressed a % whereby a population means lies between an upper and lower interval".

The margin of error is the range of values below and above the sample statistic in a confidence interval.

Normal distribution, is a "probability distribution that is symmetric about the mean, showing that data near the mean are more frequent in occurrence than data far from the mean".

[tex]\bar X[/tex] represent the sample mean for the sample  

[tex]\mu[/tex] population mean (variable of interest)

s represent the sample standard deviation

n represent the sample size  

Solution  to the problem

The confidence interval for the mean is given by the following formula:

[tex]\bar X \pm t_{\alpha/2}\frac{s}{\sqrt{n}}[/tex]   (1)

In order to calculate the critical value [tex]t_{\alpha/2}[/tex] we need to find first the degrees of freedom, given by:

[tex]df=n-1=5-1=4[/tex]

Since the Confidence is 0.95 or 95%, the value of [tex]\alpha=0.05[/tex] and [tex]\alpha/2 =0.025[/tex], and we can use excel, a calculator or a table to find the critical value. The excel command would be: "=-T.INV(0.025,4)".And we see that [tex]t_{\alpha/2}=2.7764[/tex]

So the correct option would be:

B. 2.7764