In a small town, there are two clinics, Lee's Clinic and Hope Clinic. At Lee's Clinic, the waiting time of a patient follows a normal distribution with mean 25 minutes and standard deviation 8 minutes. The waiting time for patient at Hope Clinic follows a normal distribution with mean 37 minutes and standard deviation 4 minutes.
- ((i))
A random sample of five patients at Lee's Clinic is selected. Find the probability that the mean waiting time of these five patients differs from the waiting time of a randomly selected patient at Hope Clinic by at least five minutes.
State an assumption needed for your calculations to be valid.
- (main)
Find the probability that the mean waiting time of these five patients differs from the waiting time of a randomly selected patient at Hope Clinic by at least five minutes.
- (assumption)
State an assumption needed for your calculations to be valid.
- (main)
- ((ii))
On a particular day, (where ) patients were treated at Lee's Clinic. By using a suitable approximation, find the least value of such that the probability that at most 40 of the patients have waiting times of more than 25 minutes is less than 0.95.
- ((iii))
At Lee's Clinic, on average, one in five patients is treated for influenza. Sixty samples of 20 patients are chosen. Find the probability that the average number of patients treated for influenza per sample is more than 3.5.
- ((iv))
State, with a reason, whether a normal model is likely to be appropriate for the waiting time of a randomly selected patient from the combined group of patients from Lee's Clinic and Hope Clinic.
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Worked solution
10((i))(main)
1. Define the random variables and find the distribution of the sample mean for Lee's Clinic.
Let and be the waiting times (in minutes) at Lee's Clinic and Hope Clinic respectively.
and
Let be the sample mean waiting time of patients at Lee's Clinic.
2. Formulate the linear combination for the difference and determine its mean and variance.
Let .
Therefore, .
3. Set up the probability expression for a difference of at least 5 minutes.
The probability that the difference is at least minutes is given by .
4. Evaluate the probability using a graphing calculator.
Using a graphing calculator for :
Total Probability (to 3 s.f.)
(Alternatively, )
10((i))(assumption)
1. State the assumption required for combining the distributions of two different random variables
To calculate the variance of the difference , we must assume that the random variables are independent.
Assumption: The waiting time of a patient at Lee's Clinic is independent of the waiting time of a patient at Hope Clinic.
The waiting time of a randomly selected patient at Lee's Clinic is independent of the waiting time of a randomly selected patient at Hope Clinic.
10((ii))
1. Identify the probability of the given condition and define the binomial distribution.
Let be the waiting time of a patient at Lee's Clinic. We are given .
Since the normal distribution is symmetric about its mean, the probability that a patient waits more than 25 minutes is .
Let be the number of patients with waiting times of more than 25 minutes out of patients.
Then .
2. State the suitable normal approximation.
Since , and , can be approximated by a normal distribution:
approximately.
3. Formulate the probability inequality using continuity correction and standardise.
We are given .
Applying continuity correction for the approximation:
Standardising the variable:
4. Find the critical value from the standard normal distribution and simplify the inequality.
From the standard normal distribution, .
Thus, we require:
Since , we can multiply both sides by it:
5. Solve the quadratic inequality to find the least integer $n$.
Let . The inequality becomes:
Solving the quadratic equation :
So we need , which means:
Since must be an integer, the least value of is 68.
10((iii))
1. Define the distribution for the number of influenza patients in a single sample.
Let be the number of patients treated for influenza in a sample of 20 patients.
Given that the probability of a patient being treated for influenza is ,
2. State the approximate distribution of the sample mean using the Central Limit Theorem.
Let be the average number of influenza patients per sample for samples.
Since the number of samples is large (), by the Central Limit Theorem, is approximately normally distributed.
Therefore, approximately.
3. Calculate the probability that the sample mean is greater than 3.5.
We want to find .
Using a graphing calculator,
(to 3 s.f.)
10((iv))
1. State the inappropriateness of the normal model and provide the reasoning based on the mixture of two distributions with different means.
A normal model is not likely to be appropriate.
The waiting times of patients at Lee's Clinic and Hope Clinic follow normal distributions with significantly different means (25 minutes and 37 minutes) and different standard deviations. The combined group will consist of a mixture of these two distinct distributions, which will likely result in a bimodal (two-peaked) or skewed distribution rather than the symmetric, unimodal, bell-shaped curve required for a normal model.
No, a normal model is not likely to be appropriate because the distribution of the combined group is likely to be bimodal due to the two populations having significantly different means.
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