Chapter 10

Austin Brandon & Erin

Our group was assigned problem number 10 on page 486. This problem is based

on information taken from The Rating Guide to Life in America's Fifty States. The

information gathered is on the population proportion of voter turnout in California and in

Colorado. A random sample of 288 voters registered in California showed that 141

voted in the last election. From this we know that our first sample size is 288, and 141 is

the number of successes. In Colorado the sample size was 216 and the number of

successes was 125.

The first step was to find the null and alternate hypothesis. The null hypothesis

for , .this problem is H0: p1=p2, or that there is no difference in voter turnout between

California and Colorado. Our null hypothesis is H1: p1<p, or that voter turnout in

California is less than that of Colorado. For this problem we were told to use a level of

significance of 5%, this will decide whether we reject or fail to reject the null hypothesis.

Then to find the ^p 1 we had to use the formula R1/N1 which ended up being 0.490,

and for ^p 2 we used the formula R2/N2 which ended up being 0.579. These numbers

are later used to help find our z-score.

Next we found the pooled best estimates for the probabilities of success and

failure. To calculate p we used the equation (r1 + r2)/(n1 + n2). This gave us a p

of 0.523. Then to calculate q we subtracted p by 1. To find the z score we used

the equation
 After plugging in all numbers into equation on calculator we found the z

score to be -1.98. Then we used table 3 to find the p value. The p value is 0.0239.

After finding all calculations we had to conclude the test and interpret the

conclusion. We reject the null hypothesis that voter turnout in California and Colorado

are the same. We therefore accept that Colorado has a higher voter turnout.

Next we had to find a confidence interval. In order to

calculate this we used the formula E= Zc x Level of error can

tell us whether or not we made the correct decision with a 95% level of certainty. E=-

3.904. After finding E we subtract it from ^p 1 - ^p 2, then you add it to ^p 1 - ^p 2.

-0.089 - 0.088 <p1 -p2 < -0.089 + 0.088

-0.177 < p1 -p2 < -0.001. Because both of these values are negative we can see that we made

the correct choice in rejecting the null hypothesis.