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A marketing researcher wants to find a \(95 \%\) confidence interval for the mean amount that visitors to a theme park spend per person per day. She knows that the standard deviation of the amounts spent per person per day by all visitors to this park is \(\$ 11\). How large a sample should the researcher select so that the estimate will be within \(\$ 2\) of the population mean?

Short Answer

Expert verified
To determine how large a sample the researcher should select so that the estimate will be within $2 of the population mean with 95% confidence, she should use formula to calculate sample size and replace all known values in. After calculation, the sample size will be \(n\), the result of the formula, rounded up to the nearest whole number.

Step by step solution

01

Identify the correct formula

For a confidence interval with known standard deviation, we use this formula to calculate the necessary sample size: \(n = (\frac{Z_{\frac{\alpha}{2}} * \sigma}{E})^2\). Here, \(Z_{\frac{\alpha}{2}}\) is the z-value associated with the desired confidence level, \(\sigma\) is the population standard deviation, and \(E\) is the desired margin of error (how close we would like to come to the population mean).
02

Find the Z-value for the 95% Confidence Level

The z-value for a 95% confidence interval is 1.96 (based on the z-table or using a statistical calculator or software). This is because 95% of the data lies within 1.96 standard deviations from the mean in a normal distribution. Therefore, \(Z_{\frac{\alpha}{2}} = 1.96\).
03

Substituting values into formula

The standard deviation \(\sigma\) is $11 and the desired margin of error \(E\) is $2. Substitute these values and the Z-value from step 2 into the sample size formula: \(n = (\frac{1.96 * 11}{2})^2\).
04

Calculating the sample size

Performing the calculation will yield the minimum sample size necessary to ensure that our estimate is within $2 of the population mean with 95% confidence. Remember to always round up to the nearest whole number, because you can't have a fraction of a person in the sample.

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