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Statistics elaborate I am confused?!?!?!

 
 
Reply Sun 24 Jan, 2016 08:24 pm
14) The average weight of a set X of 100 bags of rice is 90 pounds and the standard deviation of the weights is 8 pounds. Bag A weighs 2 standard deviations below the average weight of bags in set X. Bag B weighs 5 pounds more than the average.

It is a quantitative comparison question. (quantity A always greater, B always greater, the two quantities are equal or cannot be determined)

Quantity A is twice the difference between weight of Bag B and weight of Bag A (this is 42)
Quantity B is the range of weights of bags of rice in set X

The way I reasoned it was that 99.7% of data lies within +/- 3 standard dev away from mean so I got a range of 114-66 which is 48 and I got quantity B is bigger which is wrong.

The answer is D cannot be determined. I don't get the explanation in the solutions of the book.
They said the range of the weight of the bags in set X could be less than, more than or equal to 42.

how is this?!?!?!

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Reply Sun 24 Jan, 2016 08:39 pm
@edgarthendoschool,
You don't have an infinite number of bags. If you did, your +/- three sigma argument would be reasonable. Since you have a finite set of bags, it could be that they all fit inside 2.5 sigma on either side which would be 40, not 48. That is the thing with statistics, it describes what is likely to be, not what is. The chance of getting a value outside of 2.6 sigma is one percent. If you take a hundred samples, you would expect one of them to be outside 2.6 sigma, but if you calculate the stats, there is over a 30% chance that none of them will be. If you take 200 samples there is still a ten percent chance that you will not have any outside of 2.6 sigma. If you really want to prove this to yourself, it would be easy to make a hundred random weights in Excel and see how many times it falls outside the range.
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