Question

The weight of an adult swan is normally distributed with a mean of 26 pounds and a standard deviation of 7.2 pounds. A farmer randomly selected 36 swans and loaded them into his truck. What is the probability that this flock of swans weighs > 1000 pounds?

Answer 1

Let $X$ denote the random variable for the weight of a swan. Then each swan in the sample of 36 selected by the farmer can be assigned a weight denoted by $X_1,\ldots,X_{36}$, each independently and identically distributed with distribution $X_i\sim\mathcal N(26,7.2)$.

You want to find

$\mathbb P(X_1+\cdots+X_{36}>1000)=\mathbb P\left(\displaystyle\sum_{i=1}^{36}X_i>1000\right)$

Note that the left side is 36 times the average of the weights of the swans in the sample, i.e. the probability above is equivalent to

$\mathbb P\left(36\displaystyle\sum_{i=1}^{36}\frac{X_i}{36}>1000\right)=\mathbb P\left(\overline X>\dfrac{1000}{36}\right)$

Recall that if $X\sim\mathcal N(\mu,\sigma)$, then the sampling distribution $\overline X=\displaystyle\sum_{i=1}^n\frac{X_i}n\sim\mathcal N\left(\mu,\dfrac\sigma{\sqrt n}\right)$ with $n$ being the size of the sample.

Transforming to the standard normal distribution, you have

$Z=\dfrac{\overline X-\mu_{\overline X}}{\sigma_{\overline X}}=\sqrt n\dfrac{\overline X-\mu}{\sigma}$

so that in this case,

$Z=6\dfrac{\overline X-26}{7.2}$

and the probability is equivalent to

$\mathbb P\left(\overline X>\dfrac{1000}{36}\right)=\mathbb P\left(6\dfrac{\overline X-26}{7.2}>6\dfrac{\frac{1000}{36}-26}{7.2}\right)$
$=\mathbb P(Z>1.481)\approx0.0693$