Question

Suppose ACT Composite scores are normally distributed with a mean of 21.2 and a standard deviation of 5.2. A university plans to offer tutoring jobs to students whose scores are in the top 1%.What is the minimum score required for the job offer? Round your answer to 1 decimal place.

Answer 1

Answer:

So the value of score that separates the bottom 99% of data from the top 1% is 33.316.  

And rounded to 1 decimal place would be 33.3

Step-by-step explanation:

1) Previous concepts

Normal distribution, is a "probability distribution that is symmetric about the mean, showing that data near the mean are more frequent in occurrence than data far from the mean".

The Z-score is "a numerical measurement used in statistics of a value's relationship to the mean (average) of a group of values, measured in terms of standard deviations from the mean".  

2) Solution to the problem

Let X the random variable that represent the scores for the ACT of a population, and for this case we know the distribution for X is given by:

$X \sim N(21.5,5.2)$  

Where $\mu=21.5$ and $\sigma=5.2$

And the best way to solve this problem is using the normal standard distribution and the z score given by:

$z=\frac{x-\mu}{\sigma}$

For this part we want to find a value a, such that we satisfy this condition:

$P(X>a)=0.01$   (a)

$P(X<a)=0.99$   (b)

Both conditions are equivalent on this case. We can use the z score again in order to find the value a.  

As we can see on the figure attached the z value that satisfy the condition with 0.99 of the area on the left and 0.01 of the area on the right it's z=2.33. On this case P(Z<2.33)=0.99 and P(Z>2.33)=0.01

If we use condition (b) from previous we have this:

$P(X<a)=P(\frac{X-\mu}{\sigma}<\frac{a-\mu}{\sigma})=0.99$  

$P(Z<\frac{a-\mu}{\sigma})=0.99$

But we know which value of z satisfy the previous equation so then we can do this:

$Z=2.33<\frac{a-21.2}{5.2}$

And if we solve for a we got

$a=21.2 +2.33*5.2=33.316$

So the value of score that separates the bottom 99% of data from the top 1% is 33.316.  

And rounded to 1 decimal place would be 33.3