Freshmen earn 15 pounds (about 6.8 kg) during their first year at university. Below are listed the changes in muscle mass (in kilograms) for a simple freshman sample collected in a study. Positive values correspond to students who gained weight during their first year at university, while negative values correspond to students who lost weight. a) calculate the sample mean and standard deviation of weight changes b) according to the previous result, can we agree with the statement that freshmen earn 15 pounds in the first year of university?
Continuous Probability Distributions
Probability distributions are of two types, which are continuous probability distributions and discrete probability distributions. A continuous probability distribution contains an infinite number of values. For example, if time is infinite: you could count from 0 to a trillion seconds, billion seconds, so on indefinitely. A discrete probability distribution consists of only a countable set of possible values.
Normal Distribution
Suppose we had to design a bathroom weighing scale, how would we decide what should be the range of the weighing machine? Would we take the highest recorded human weight in history and use that as the upper limit for our weighing scale? This may not be a great idea as the sensitivity of the scale would get reduced if the range is too large. At the same time, if we keep the upper limit too low, it may not be usable for a large percentage of the population!
Freshmen earn 15 pounds (about 6.8 kg) during their first year at university. Below are listed the changes in muscle mass (in kilograms) for a simple freshman sample collected in a study. Positive values correspond to students who gained weight during their first year at university, while negative values correspond to students who lost weight.
a) calculate the sample mean and standard deviation of weight changes
b) according to the previous result, can we agree with the statement that freshmen earn 15 pounds in the first year of university?
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