This exercise uses the normal probability density function and requires the use of either technology or a table of values of the standard normal distribution. The cash operating expenses of the regional phone companies during the first half of 1994 were distributed about a mean of $29.79 per access line per month, with a standard deviation of $2.55. Company A's operating expenses were $28.00 per access line per month. Assuming a normal distribution of operating expenses, estimate the percentage of regional phone companies whose operating expenses were closer to the mean than the operating expenses of Company A were to the mean. (Round your answer to two decimal places.)
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!
This exercise uses the normal probability density
The cash operating expenses of the regional phone companies during the first half of 1994 were distributed about a mean of $29.79 per access line per month, with a standard deviation of $2.55. Company A's operating expenses were $28.00 per access line per month. Assuming a normal distribution of operating expenses, estimate the percentage of regional phone companies whose operating expenses were closer to the mean than the operating expenses of Company A were to the mean. (Round your answer to two decimal places.)
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