Edexcel S2 — Question 6

Exam BoardEdexcel
ModuleS2 (Statistics 2)
TopicHypothesis test of a Poisson distribution

6. A teacher is monitoring attendance at lessons in her department. She believes that the number of students absent from each lesson follows a Poisson distribution and wished to test the null hypothesis that the mean is 2.5 against the alternative hypothesis that it is greater than 2.5 She visits one lesson and decides on a critical region of 6 or more students absent.
  1. Find the significance level of this test.
  2. State any assumptions made in carrying out this test and comment on their validity. The teacher decides to undertake a wider study by looking at a sample of all the lessons that have taken place in the department during the previous four weeks.
  3. Suggest a suitable sampling frame. She finds that there have been 96 pupils absent from the 30 lessons in her sample.
  4. Using a suitable approximation, test at the \(5 \%\) level of significance the null hypothesis that the mean is 2.5 students absent per lesson against the alternative hypothesis that it is greater than 2.5. You may assume that the number of absences follows a Poisson distribution.
    (6 marks)