CAIE S2 (Statistics 2) 2013 June

Question 1
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1 Marie wants to choose one student at random from Anthea, Bill and Charlie. She throws two fair coins. If both coins show tails she will choose Anthea. If both coins show heads she will choose Bill. If the coins show one of each she will choose Charlie.
  1. Explain why this is not a fair method for choosing the student.
  2. Describe how Marie could use the two coins to give a fair method for choosing the student.
Question 2
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2 The times taken by students to complete a task are normally distributed with standard deviation 2.4 minutes. A lecturer claims that the mean time is 17.0 minutes. The times taken by a random sample of 5 students were 17.8, 22.4, 16.3, 23.1 and 11.4 minutes. Carry out a hypothesis test at the \(5 \%\) significance level to determine whether the lecturer's claim should be accepted.
Question 3
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3 Weights of cups have a normal distribution with mean 91 g and standard deviation 3.2 g . Weights of saucers have an independent normal distribution with mean 72 g and standard deviation 2.6 g . Cups and saucers are chosen at random to be packed in boxes, with 6 cups and 6 saucers in each box. Given that each empty box weighs 550 g , find the probability that the total weight of a box containing 6 cups and 6 saucers exceeds 1550 g .
Question 4
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4 The lengths, \(x \mathrm {~m}\), of a random sample of 200 balls of string are found and the results are summarised by \(\Sigma x = 2005\) and \(\Sigma x ^ { 2 } = 20175\).
  1. Calculate unbiased estimates of the population mean and variance of the lengths.
  2. Use the values from part (i) to estimate the probability that the mean length of a random sample of 50 balls of string is less than 10 m .
  3. Explain whether or not it was necessary to use the Central Limit theorem in your calculation in part (ii).
Question 5
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5 The probability that a new car of a certain type has faulty brakes is 0.008 . A random sample of 520 new cars of this type is chosen, and the number, \(X\), having faulty brakes is noted.
  1. Describe fully the distribution of \(X\) and describe also a suitable approximating distribution. Justify this approximating distribution.
  2. Use your approximating distribution to find
    (a) \(\mathrm { P } ( X > 3 )\),
    (b) the smallest value of \(n\) such that \(\mathrm { P } ( X = n ) > \mathrm { P } ( X = n + 1 )\).
Question 6
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6 The time in minutes taken by people to read a certain booklet is modelled by the random variable \(T\) with probability density function given by $$f ( t ) = \begin{cases} \frac { 1 } { 2 \sqrt { } t } & 4 \leqslant t \leqslant 9
0 & \text { otherwise } \end{cases}$$
  1. Find the time within which \(90 \%\) of people finish reading the booklet.
  2. Find \(\mathrm { E } ( T )\) and \(\operatorname { Var } ( T )\).
Question 7
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7 Leila suspects that a particular six-sided die is biased so that the probability, \(p\), that it will show a six is greater than \(\frac { 1 } { 6 }\). She tests the die by throwing it 5 times. If it shows a six on 3 or more throws she will conclude that it is biased.
  1. State what is meant by a Type I error in this situation and calculate the probability of a Type I error.
  2. Assuming that the value of \(p\) is actually \(\frac { 2 } { 3 }\), calculate the probability of a Type II error. Leila now throws the die 80 times and it shows a six on 50 throws.
  3. Calculate an approximate \(96 \%\) confidence interval for \(p\).