Question

The number of gallons of carbonated soft drink consumed per person annually is normally distributed with mean 47.5 and standard deviation 3.5.The probability that a randomly selected person consumes between 45 and 50 gallons of carbonated soft drink per year is about:

Answer 1

Answer:

$P(45$

And we can find this probability with the following difference:

$P(-0.714$

And in order to find these probabilities we can use tables for the normal standard distribution, excel or a calculator.  

$P(-0.714$

Step-by-step explanation:

Previous concepts

Normal distribution, is a "probability distribution that is symmetric about the mean, showing that data near the mean are more frequent in occurrence than data far from the mean".

The Z-score is "a numerical measurement used in statistics of a value's relationship to the mean (average) of a group of values, measured in terms of standard deviations from the mean".  

Solution to the problem

Let X the random variable that represent the number of gallons of a population, and for this case we know the distribution for X is given by:

$X \sim N(47.5,3.5)$  

Where $\mu=47.5$ and $\sigma=3.5$

We are interested on this probability

$P(45$

And the best way to solve this problem is using the normal standard distribution and the z score given by:

$z=\frac{x-\mu}{\sigma}$

If we apply this formula to our probability we got this:

$P(45$

And we can find this probability with the following difference:

$P(-0.714$

And in order to find these probabilities we can use tables for the normal standard distribution, excel or a calculator.  

$P(-0.714$