Question

A survey of 76 commercial airline flights of under 2 hours resulted in a sample average late time for a flight of 2.55 minutes. The population standard deviation was 12 minutes. Construct a 95% confidence interval for the average time that a commercial flight of under 2 hours is late. What is the point estimate? What does the interval tell about whether the average flight is late?

Answer 1

Answer:

The best point of estimate for the true mean is:

$\hat \mu = \bar X = 2.55$

$2.55-1.96\frac{12}{\sqrt{76}}=-0.148$    

$2.55+1.96\frac{12}{\sqrt{76}}=5.248$    

Since the time can't be negative a good approximation for the confidence interval would be (0,5.248) minutes. The interval are tellling to us that at 95% of confidence the average late time is lower than 5.248 minutes.

Step-by-step explanation:

Information given

$\bar X=2.55$ represent the sample mean for the late time for a flight

$\mu$ population mean

$\sigma=12$ represent the population deviation

n=76 represent the sample size  

Confidence interval

The best point of estimate for the true mean is:

$\hat \mu = \bar X = 2.55$

The confidence interval for the true mean is given by:

$\bar X \pm z_{\alpha/2}\frac{\sigma}{\sqrt{n}}$   (1)

The Confidence level given is 0.95 or 95%, th significance would be $\alpha=0.05$ and $\alpha/2 =0.025$. If we look in the normal distribution a quantile that accumulates 0.025 of the area on each tail we got $z_{\alpha/2}=1.96$

Replacing we got:

$2.55-1.96\frac{12}{\sqrt{76}}=-0.148$    

$2.55+1.96\frac{12}{\sqrt{76}}=5.248$    

Since the time can't be negative a good approximation for the confidence interval would be (0,5.248) minutes. The interval are tellling to us that at 95% of confidence the average late time is lower than 5.248 minutes.