AP Statistics : AP Statistics

Study concepts, example questions & explanations for AP Statistics

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Example Questions

Example Question #1 :How To Establish A Null Hypothesis

For his school science project, Timmy wants to determine whether the ants in his neighborhood have colonies that are sized differently than normal. His research shows that the average Harvester colony has around 4000 ants. He counts the number of ants in 5 colonies and determines that the average colony size is 3,700 ants. What is the appropriate null hypothesis for his science project?

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Correct answer:

Explanation:

Timmy does not have a directional hypothesis, he only wants to know whether local ant colonies are different from average. Therefore he thinks the colonies could be bigger or smaller than average. This means his alternative hypothesis is that the ant colonies are NOT equal to the average colony size of 4000 ants. His null hypothesis must include all other outcomes, which in this case is that local ant colonies are equal to the average size of 4000 ants.

Example Question #21 :Significance Logic And Establishing Hypotheses

A study would like to determine whether meditation helps students improve focus time. They used a control group of 30 students and compared their focus time to a group of 30 meditating students and compared their average time spent meditating. What is the appropriate null hypothesis for this study?

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Correct answer:

Explanation:

Because we are comparing two samples, the hypothesis takes the form of Mu1- Mu2. Because we are testing the claim that meditation increases average study time, the null hypothesis must cover all other outcomes. That means the null hypothesis is that the difference between control minus meditation is greater than or equal to zero.

Example Question #41 :Inference

What is, or the expected value offor any distribution?

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Explanation:

is, or the mean, of the population. This makes sense sinceliterally means the expected value of. The mean is the expected value of.

Example Question #1 :Estimates

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Explanation:

Example Question #41 :Inference

The next local election is predicted to have asplit in votes for the top two candidates. How many people should be polled to obtain a margin of error of 3% at the 95% confidence level?

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Correct answer:

Explanation:

If you remember the required formula, this problem is rather simple. Plug in the given numbers and simplify:

如果你不记得公式,这个问题more challenging. Your best bet in this case is to construct the confidence interval and rearrange to solve for the required sample size.

Example Question #41 :Ap Statistics

When dealing with confidence intervals, the margin of error gets smaller when z* gets________and n gets_________.

Possible Answers:

larger . . . larger

smaller . . . smaller

smaller . . . larger

There is no way to affect the margin of error in confidence intervals

larger . . . smaller

Correct answer:

smaller . . . larger

Explanation:

For confidence intervals, a small margin of error is preferred, as it indicates that the parameter of interest has been narrowed down to a precise interval. Having a large sample population to work from as well as a small z* (z* gets smaller as the confidence level percent gets lower) can help obtain a small margin of error.

Example Question #4 :Estimates

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Correct answer:

Explanation:

Example Question #3 :Estimation

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Explanation:

Example Question #1 :Confidence Intervals

Suppose you have a normally distributed variable with known variance. How many standard errors do you need to add and subtract from the sample mean so that you obtain 95% confidence intervals?

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Correct answer:

Explanation:

To obtain 95% confidence intervals for a normal distribution with known variance, you take the mean and add/subtract. This is because 95% of the values drawn from a normally distributed sampling distribution lie within 1.96 standard errors from the sample mean.

Example Question #1 :Confidence Intervals

An automotive engineer wants to estimate the cost of repairing a car that experiences a 25 MPH head-on collision. He crashes 24 cars, and the average repair is $11,000. The standard deviation of the 24-car sample is $2,500.

Provide a 98% confidence interval for the true mean cost of repair.

Possible Answers:

Correct answer:

Explanation:

标准差samle意味着:

Since n < 30, we must use the t-table (not the z-table).

The 98% t-value for n=24 is 2.5.

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