Tutorial Questions
Estimating the Value of a Parameter
1. Define a point estimate and give an example.
2. If 458 out of 1015 people say taxes are too high, what is the point estimate?
3. What is a confidence interval and why is it used in statistics?
4. What does a 95% level of confidence mean in the context of interval estimation?
5. State the conditions under which the sampling distribution of the sample proportion is
approximately normal.
6. What formula is used to compute the standard error of a population proportion?
7. What does the margin of error represent in a confidence interval?
8. Express the general formula for a confidence interval for a population proportion.
9. Calculate a 95% confidence interval for a proportion of 0.451 with a margin of error of 0.04.
10. Explain what a critical value is in the context of confidence intervals.
11. List the critical values for 90%, 95%, and 99% confidence levels.
12. Interpret a confidence interval of (0.411, 0.491).
13. Given x = 272 and n = 800, compute the sample proportion.
14. Use a 95% confidence level to compute the margin of error for a sample proportion of 0.34
and n = 800.
15. What happens to the margin of error when the confidence level increases?
16. What happens to the margin of error when the sample size increases?
17. What is the formula to determine sample size when estimating a population proportion with a
known p̂?
18. What is the formula to determine sample size when no prior estimate of p is available?
19. An economist wants a 2% margin of error at 90% confidence, using p = 0.10. What is the
required sample size?
20. Repeat question 19 without using any prior estimate of p.
21. Define the point estimate for the population mean.
22. A sample has the following mpg values: 28, 27, 30, 29. Calculate the sample mean.
23. Define the t-distribution. How is it different from the standard normal distribution?
24. What happens to the shape of the t-distribution as the sample size increases?
25. Describe two properties of the t-distribution.
26. Find the t-value with 15 degrees of freedom and an area of 0.10 to the right.
27. Construct a 95% confidence interval for a population mean when x̄ = 28.1, s = 2.38, n = 16.
28. Interpret the confidence interval (26.83, 29.37) for mean mpg.
29. What are the conditions under which the t-distribution can be used?
30. Explain Option 1 of checking for normality when n < 30.
31. When should the Central Limit Theorem be relied upon?
32. State the formula to calculate margin of error for estimating the mean using t-distribution.
33. What is the formula for sample size when estimating a population mean with known s?
34. How large a sample is needed to estimate mpg within 0.5 mpg with 95% confidence if s =
2.38?
35. What distribution is used to estimate the population variance?
36. List two characteristics of the chi-square distribution.
37. How do you find the chi-square critical values for a two-tailed interval?
38. What is the formula for a confidence interval for a population variance?
39. Convert a confidence interval for variance into one for standard deviation.
40. Given s = $2615.19 and n = 12, construct a 90% confidence interval for the population
standard deviation.
41. Define bootstrapping in the context of parameter estimation.
42. When is bootstrapping appropriate instead of parametric methods?
43. What are the two key requirements for using bootstrap methods?
44. Explain how the percentile method is used to create bootstrap confidence intervals.
45. Outline the 3 steps of the bootstrap algorithm.
46. What is the impact of small sample sizes on bootstrap estimates?
47. How is the standard error from bootstrap methods generally different from parametric
methods?
48. Why might bootstrap distributions have less variability than the true population?
49. What is the Law of Large Numbers and how does it relate to confidence interval estimation?
50. In your own words, explain how confidence intervals support informed decision-making.
