David wants to rent an unfurnished apartment for next semester. He took a random sample of 9 apartments adversised in the local Halifax paper, and recorded the rental rates. The rents (in $ per month) were:

500 650 600 505 450 550 515 495 640

a) Find a 90% confidence interval for the mean monthly rent for unfurnished apartments in this community.

b) You wish to test the null hypothesis that the true mean monthly rent for an unfurnished apartment is $500. What is the value of the test statistic?

c) A student at the University of Calgary carried out a similar study, but using a sample of 16 apartments. The value of the test statistic for that study was 2.71. What would be the p-value to test against the alternative that the mean rent is not equal to $500.

2 answers

1.93
b) Your sample mean = 545
Your sd = 68.9553
Your standard error = 68.9553 / √ 9
SE = 68.9553/3
New standard error = 22.9851
=
t = (545-500) / 22.9851
t = 1.9578

c) n-1=15 = P( |t| > 2.71) =0.0161