Unit 3 Discussion
Unit 3 Discussion
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Is this Unusual?
In this discussion, you will explore probabilities within normal distributions and see how these probabilities can be useful in decision making. Systolic blood pressure (SBP) is one variable that is known to have a normal distribution. Wright et al. (2011) provided systolic blood pressure statistics for the following ethnicities✠and age groups:
****Attached Below****
*The referenced publication provided standard errors, which were converted to approximate standard deviations by multiplying the standard error by the square root of the sample size for the age/ethnic group, given in the technical notes of the publication.
âœWe acknowledge that there are many more race/ethnicity groups than those listed in the table. These are simply the ones the researchers selected for comparison purposes at that time.
Wright, J. D., Hughes, J. P., Ostchega, Y., Yoon, S. S., & Nwankwo, T. (2011, March 25). Mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure in adults aged 18 and over in the United States, 2001–2008. National Health Statistics Reports, Number 35. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr035.pdf.
Watch the Unit 3 Discussion video in the LiveBinder for a demonstration of how to use Excel and the above table to complete this week’s discussion. You will do the following:
- Open a blank Excel worksheet. Go to cell A1 and type the following =RANDBETWEEN(82, 203), then press Enter. Make sure to start with an equal sign, and Excel should generate a random integer between the values of 82 and 203, inclusive. State your random value.
- From the table above, select one of the listed ethnicities to work with. State your selected ethnicity.
- Within your chosen ethnicity, select two age groups on which you would like to focus. State your two selected age groups.
- For the first ethnic/age group you selected, answer the following questions:
- Use the above table to find the mean and standard deviation of systolic blood pressure (SBP) for the group. State the mean and SD.
- If your random value from step 1 was the SBP of a person from this ethnic/age group, what would the corresponding z-score be (SHOW WORK)?
- Use technology to calculate the percentage of people in this group with SBP at or below this value. Paste a snip of the normal curve picture showing the corresponding shaded area into your post.
- Is this SBP unusual for this ethnic/age group? Explain.
- For the second ethnic/age group you selected, answer the following questions:
- Use the above table to find the mean and standard deviation of systolic blood pressure (SBP) for the group. State the mean and SD.
- If your random value from Step 1 was the SBP of a person from this ethnic/age group, what would the corresponding z-score be (SHOW WORK)?
- Use technology to calculate the percentage of people in this group with SBP at or above this value. Paste a snip of the normal curve picture showing the corresponding shaded area into your post.
- Is this SBP unusual for this ethnic/age group? Explain.
- Based on the z-scores and percentages you got in steps 4 and 5 of the discussion, is the SBP you randomly generated in Excel closer to the first ethnic/age group you selected, or is it closer to the second one? Explain.
- Suppose you took a sample of 40 people from the first ethnic/age group you selected. If your randomly generated SBP was the sample mean SBP of these 40 people, what would the z-score be (SHOW WORK)? Hint: Since this is a sample of SBPs, you will need to use the sampling distribution and corresponding z-score formula. Would this sample mean be unusual for your selected ethnic/age group? Explain.