Chapter 6: Problem 6
The average monthly mortgage payment including principal and interest is \(\$ 982\) in the United States. If the standard deviation is approximately \(\$ 180\) and the mortgage payments are approximately normally distributed, find the probability that a randomly selected monthly payment is a. More than \(\$ 1000\) b. More than \(\$ 1475\) c. Between \(\$ 800\) and \(\$ 1150\)
Short Answer
Step by step solution
Calculate Z-score for Part a
Find Probability for Part a
Calculate Z-score for Part b
Find Probability for Part b
Calculate Z-scores for Part c
Find Probability for Part c
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Key Concepts
These are the key concepts you need to understand to accurately answer the question.
Z-score
- \( X \) is the value being analyzed
- \( \mu \) is the mean of the dataset
- \( \sigma \) is the standard deviation of the dataset
Z-scores indicate how many standard deviations a value lies from the mean. For example, in the mortgage exercise:
- A Z-score of \( 0.10 \) suggests that the payment of \( \\(1000 \) is just above the average \( \\)982 \).
- A higher Z-score of \( 2.74 \) for \( \\(1475 \) indicates it's quite a bit higher than the average.
- Z-scores can be negative, which means the value is below the average. This is shown by a score of \( -1.01 \) for \( \\)800 \).
Standard Deviation
In the context of mortgage payments:
- If most monthly payments cluster around the mean of \( \\)982 \), the standard deviation will help determine how typical or atypical a payment value is.
- A low standard deviation would imply that most payments are close to the average, while a higher standard deviation indicates that there is a wider spread of payment amounts.
- In this example, the standard deviation helps us compute Z-scores, which are essential in determining how unusual certain payments, like \( \\(1000 \) or \( \\)1475 \), are.
Probability
- The chance that a payment is more than \( \\(1000 \) is approximately \( 0.4598 \). This means there's almost a \( 46% \) chance a random payment is over \( \\)1000 \).
- For payments exceeding \( \\(1475 \), the probability is much smaller at \( 0.0031 \), suggesting such high payments are rare.
- Between \( \\)800 \) and \( \$1150 \), the likelihood increases significantly to \( 0.6676 \), indicating that typical payments fall within this range with a probability of more than \( 66% \).
Recognizing these probabilities helps us understand how likely different payment values are within the given distribution.
Statistics
Here are key takeaways regarding this topic:
- Statistical measures such as the mean and standard deviation allow us to summarize data comprehensively.
- The normal distribution, often depicted as a bell curve, is vital in analyzing data that clusters around a mean—shown by our mortgage payments.
- Z-scores and probabilities aid in exploring and predicting data behaviors, making statistics incredibly powerful for real-world applications like predicting financial data trends.
Overall, statistics turns raw numbers into meaningful insights, enabling informed decisions based on data.