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Home > Education > Homework Help > Math & Sciences   »   probability in statistics

 
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Old Apr 30, 2008, 06:48 PM
trclem40
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probability in statistics

One medical textbook states that only 6% of th human population has blood type O-Negative. Assume that a simple random sample of 45 people are selected.

A. Find the probability that 5 of the selected people have blood type O-Negative. Would this be considered unusual. Why or why not?

B. Find the probability that at least 4 of the selected people have blood type O- Negative. Would this be considered unusual . Why or why not?

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Old May 1, 2008, 01:17 PM   #2  
ebaines
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For A: The probability that n people in a population of 45 have this blood type is . For n = 5: .

For B: P(at least 4) = 1 - P(0) - P(1) - P(2) - P(3).

Hope this helps.
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Old May 2, 2008, 07:14 AM   #3  
iamthetman
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To determine whether or not it's unusual, look at how many people have it vs. how many people you would expect to have it.

For A: 5 people actually have that blood type
You'd expect 45 x 6% of people to have it, meaning you'd expect 2.7 people to have it out of your group of 45 people.

Hope this helps.
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Old May 2, 2008, 07:52 AM   #4  
ebaines
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The best way to determine whether 5 is an unusual number to have for this blood type out of a sample size of 45 people is to determine how many standard deviations 5 is from the mean. As IATM points out, the mean is 2.7. The formula for standard deviation of a binomial distribution like this is:



where for this problem n = 45 and p = 0.06. So here the variance is 45(/06)(.94)= 2.54, and the standard deviation is . So having 5 people with this blood type is (5-2.7)/1.6 = 1.44 standard deviations from the mean. So now you need to decide whether a Z-score of 1.44 is "unusual" or not. Hope this helps.
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