AP Statistics Chapter 8 Practice Test Name _____________

Estimating with Confidence Per __ Date ________

Part 1: Multiple Choice. Circle the letter corresponding to the best answer.
____ 1. In an opinion poll, 55% of a random sample of 300 people said that they thought
schools today are not meeting the needs of society. The standard error of the sample
proportion is approximately
(a) 0.0008 (b) 0.0287 (c) 0.0318 (d) 0.3025 (e) 0.0740

____ 2. A statistics student wants to estimate the proportion of all students that bring coffee to
school. He stands at the front door for fifteen minutes on a weekday morning and flips a coin
each time a student arrives. If the coin comes up heads, he asks them if they have any coffee
with them. After fifteen minutes, he has 33 responses, 21 of whom had coffee. Which
condition for constructing a confidence interval for a proportion has the student failed to satisfy?
(a) n p  10

 
(b) n 1  p  10
(c) n  30
(d) The data is a random sample from the population of interest.
(e) The sample is less than 10% of the population.

____ 3. The report of a sample survey of 1,014 adults says, "With 90% confidence, between 37%
and 44% of all Americans are married." What does the phrase "90% confidence" mean?
(a) We can be 90% confident that the method used to get the interval always gives the right answer.
(b) 37% to 44% of all Americans will spend 90% of their lives married.
(c) There is a 90% chance that the percent of people who are married is between 37% and 44%.
(d) The method used to get the interval from 37% to 44%, when used over and over, produces
intervals which include the true population percentage about 90% of the time.
(e) 95% of all Americans will be married between 37% and 44% of the time.

____ 4. The survey in the previous question was conducted by calling cellphones, and those
conducting the survey are concerned about the possibility of undercoverage, since some people
do not own a cellphone or only have a landline. Which of the following is the best way for them
to correct for this source of bias?
(a) Throw this sample out and start over again with a better sampling method.
(b) Use a higher confidence level, such as 99%.
(c) Use a lower confidence level, such as 80%.
(d) Use a t-interval instead of a z-interval.
(e) Take a larger sample.

____ 5. The Gallup Poll plans to ask a random sample of adults whether they attended a religious
service in the last 7 days. How large a sample would be required to obtain a margin of error of
0.01 in a 99% confidence interval for the population proportion who would say that they
attended a religious service?
(a) 129 (b) 16,589 (c) 6,766 (d) 258 (e) 66,358

____ 6. A lab supply company sells pieces of Douglas Fir 4in long and 1.5in square for force
experiments in science classes. From experience, the strength of these pieces of wood follows
a Normal distribution with standard deviation of 3000 pounds. How large of a sample is needed
to estimate the mean load needed to pull apart these pieces of wood to within 1000 pounds with
95% confidence.
(a) 571 (b) 24 (c) 7 (d) 5 (e) 35
____ 7. Which of the following has the highest probability?
(a) Randomly selecting a value greater than 2 from a standard Normal distribution.
(b) Randomly selecting a value greater than 2 from a t-distribution with 4 degrees of freedom.
(c) Randomly selecting a value greater than 2 from a t-distribution with 20 degrees of
freedom.
(d) Randomly selecting a value less than 2 from a standard Normal distribution.
(e) Randomly selecting a value less than 2 from a t-distribution with 20 degrees of freedom.

____ 8. A 90% confidence interval for the average amount spent on books by freshman at a
major university is $352 ± 2. How would the margin of error of a 95% confidence interval
based on the same sample compare with the 90% interval?
(a) It would be smaller, because it omits only 5% of the possible samples instead of 10%.
(b) It would be the same, because the sample is the same.
(c) It would be larger, because higher confidence requires a larger margin of error.
(d) Can't tell, because the margin of error varies from sample to sample.
(e) Can't tell, because it depends on the size of the population.

____ 9. You want to calculate a 90% confidence interval for a population mean from a
sample of n = 30. What is the appropriate critical t*?
(a) 1.645 (b) 1.699 (c) 1.697 (d) 1.96 (e) 2.045

____ 10. The weights (in pounds) of males in the United States are believed to be approximately
Normally distributed with mean µ. The mean height of a random sample of 3 American adult
males is found to be x  190 inches and the standard deviation S x  27.84 . What is the standard
error of x ?
(a) 190 (b) 27.84 (c) 22.73 (d) 16.07 (e) 13.13

____ 11. In checking conditions for constructing confidence intervals for a population mean, it’s
important to plot the distribution of sample data. Below are dot plots describing samples
from three different populations. For which of the three samples would it be safe to construct
a t-interval?

(a) Sample X only

(b) Sample Y only
(c) Sample Z only
(d) Samples Y and Z
(e) None of the samples
 Part 2: Free Response
Show all your work. Indicate clearly the methods you use, because you will be graded on the
correctness of your methods as well as on the accuracy and completeness of your results and
explanations.

12. The US Forest Service is considering additional restrictions on the number of vehicles allowed
to enter Yellowstone National Park. To assess public reaction, the service asks a random sample
of 150 visitors if they favor the proposal. Of these, 89 say “yes”.

Construct a 99% confidence interval to estimate the proportion of all visitors who support the
restrictions.
13. A simple random sample of 1100 males aged 12 to 17 in the United States were asked whether
they played massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs); 775 said that they did.
We want to use this information to construct a 95% confidence interval to estimate the
proportion of all U.S. males aged 12 to 17 who play MMORPGs.
Construct a 95% confidence interval to estimate the proportion of 12-to-17 year-old males who
play MMORPG’s
14. How many people live in South African households? To find out, we collected data from an SRS
of 48 out of over 700,000 South African students who took part in the CensusAtSchool survey
project. The mean number of people living in a household was 6.208; the standard deviation
was 2.576. A researcher suspects that the mean number of people living in a household is 7.4
people.

(a) Construct a 95% confidence interval to estimate the mean number of people living in a
household. Use the four-step process.

(b) Use the confidence interval you constructed in (a) to comment on whether you agree with the
researcher’s claim. Explain your reasoning clearly.
15. An environmental group conducted a study to determine whether crows in a certain region
were ingesting food containing unhealthy levels of lead. A biologist classified lead levels greater
than 6.0 parts per million (ppm) as unhealthy. The lead levels of a random sample of 23 crows in
the region were measured and recorded. The data are shown in the stemplot below.

The mean lead level of the 23 crows in the sample was 4.90 ppm and the standard deviation was
1.12 ppm. Construct and interpret a 95 percent confidence interval for the mean lead level of
crows in the region.