Question

1) Lithium isotope rations are important to medicine, the 6Li/7Li ratio in a standard reference material was measured several times, and the values are: 0.082601, 0.082621, 0.082589, 0.082617, 0.082598. Please use student’s t to find the confidence interval at the 95% confidence level. 2) If one wants the confidence interval to be two thirds of the previous one, how many times should a student repeat? (Assuming the standard deviation is the same as the previous one)?

Answer 1

Answer:

1) $0.0826052-2.776\frac{0.000013424}{\sqrt{5}}=0.082588$    

$0.0826052+2.776\frac{0.000013424}{\sqrt{5}}=0.0826219$    

b) $ME= 2.776\frac{0.000013424}{\sqrt{5}}=0.0000166653$

And we want 2/3 of the margin of error so then would be: $2/3 ME = 0.00001111$

The margin of error is given by this formula:

$ME=z_{\alpha/2}\frac{s}{\sqrt{n}}$    (1)

And on this case we have that ME =0.00001111016 and we are interested in order to find the value of n, if we solve n from equation (1) we got:

$n=(\frac{z_{\alpha/2} s}{ME})^2$   (2)

Replacing we got:

$n=(\frac{2.776(0.000013424)}{0.00001111})^2 =11.25 \approx 12$

So the answer for this case would be n=12 rounded up to the nearest integer

Step-by-step explanation:

Information given

0.082601, 0.082621, 0.082589, 0.082617, 0.082598

We can calculate the sample mean and deviation with the following formulas:

$\bar X= \frac{\sum_{i=1}^n X_i}{n}$

$s = \sqrt{\frac{\sum_{i=1}^n (X_i -\bar X)^2}{n-1}}$

$\bar X=0.0826052$ represent the sample mean

$\mu$ population mean

s=0.000013424 represent the sample standard deviation

n=5 represent the sample size  

Part 1

The confidence interval for the mean is given by the following formula:

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

The degrees of freedom, given by:

$df=n-1=5-1=4$

The Confidence level is 0.95 or 95%, and the significance would be $\alpha=0.05$ and $\alpha/2 =0.025$, the critical value would be using the t distribution with 4 degrees of freedom: $t_{\alpha/2}=2.776$

Now we have everything in order to replace into formula (1):

$0.0826052-2.776\frac{0.000013424}{\sqrt{5}}=0.082588$    

$0.0826052+2.776\frac{0.000013424}{\sqrt{5}}=0.0826219$    

Part 2

The original margin of error is given by:

$ME= 2.776\frac{0.000013424}{\sqrt{5}}=0.0000166653$

And we want 2/3 of the margin of error so then would be: $2/3 ME = 0.00001111$

The margin of error is given by this formula:

$ME=z_{\alpha/2}\frac{s}{\sqrt{n}}$    (1)

And on this case we have that ME =0.00001111016 and we are interested in order to find the value of n, if we solve n from equation (1) we got:

$n=(\frac{z_{\alpha/2} s}{ME})^2$   (2)

Replacing we got:

$n=(\frac{2.776(0.000013424)}{0.00001111})^2 =11.25 \approx 12$

So the answer for this case would be n=12 rounded up to the nearest integer