A national college researcher reported that 64% of students who graduated from high school in 2012 enrolled in college. Twenty seven high school graduates are sampled.

(a) What is the mean number who enroll in college in a sample of 27 high school graduates? Round the answer to two decimal places.

(b) What is the standard deviation of the number who enroll in college in a sample of 27 high school graduates? Round the answer to four decimal places.

1 answer

To solve these questions, we can utilize the properties of a binomial distribution. Here, the number of trials \( n \) is 27 (the number of high school graduates sampled), and the probability of success (enrolling in college) \( p \) is 0.64.

(a) Mean Number Who Enroll in College

The mean \( \mu \) of a binomial distribution is calculated using the formula:

\[ \mu = n \cdot p \]

Substituting the values:

\[ \mu = 27 \cdot 0.64 = 17.28 \]

Thus, the mean number of students who enroll in college is 17.28 (rounded to two decimal places).

(b) Standard Deviation of the Number Who Enroll in College

The standard deviation \( \sigma \) of a binomial distribution is calculated using the formula:

\[ \sigma = \sqrt{n \cdot p \cdot (1 - p)} \]

First, we need to calculate \( (1 - p) \):

\[ 1 - p = 1 - 0.64 = 0.36 \]

Now substituting the values into the formula for standard deviation:

\[ \sigma = \sqrt{27 \cdot 0.64 \cdot 0.36} \]

Calculating the inside of the square root first:

\[ 27 \cdot 0.64 = 17.28 \] \[ 17.28 \cdot 0.36 = 6.2208 \]

Now, taking the square root:

\[ \sigma = \sqrt{6.2208} \approx 2.4942 \]

Thus, the standard deviation of the number of students who enroll in college is approximately 2.4942 (rounded to four decimal places).

Summary:

  • (a) Mean: 17.28
  • (b) Standard Deviation: 2.4942