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8.8: Formula Review

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A Confidence Interval for a Population Standard Deviation Unknown, Small Sample Case

s = the standard deviation of sample values.

t=¯xμsn is the formula for the t-score which measures how far away a measure is from the population mean in the Student’s t-distribution

df=n1; the degrees of freedom for a Student’s t-distribution where n represents the size of the sample

Ttdf the random variable, T, has a Student’s t-distribution with df degrees of freedom

The general form for a confidence interval for a single mean, population standard deviation unknown, and sample size less than 30 Student's t is given by: ¯xtv,α(sn)μ¯x+tv,α(sn)

A Confidence Interval for A Population Proportion

p=xn where x represents the number of successes in a sample and n represents the sample size. The variable p′ is the sample proportion and serves as the point estimate for the true population proportion.

q=1p

The variable p has a binomial distribution that can be approximated with the normal distribution shown here. The confidence interval for the true population proportion is given by the formula:

pZαpqnpp+Zαpqn

n=Z2α2pqe2 provides the number of observations needed to sample to estimate the population proportion, p, with confidence 1α and margin of error e. Where e = the acceptable difference between the actual population proportion and the sample proportion.

Calculating the Sample Size n: Continuous and Binary Random Variables

n=Z2σ2(¯xμ)2 = the formula used to determine the sample size (n) needed to achieve a desired margin of error at a given level of confidence for a continuous random variable

n=Z2αpqe2 = the formula used to determine the sample size if the random variable is binary


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