Students in an introductory statistics class were asked to report the age of their mothers when they were born. Summary statistics include: n = 28 students, ¯x = 29.643 years, s = 4.564 years. The ages were normally distributed.
(a) Calculate the standard error of this sample mean.
(b) Determine and interpret a 90% confidence interval for the mothers mean age (at student's birth) in the population of all students at this university.
(c) How would a 99% confidence interval compare to the 90% interval in terms of its midpoint and half-width?
(d) Would you expect 90% of the ages in the sample to be within the 90% confidence interval? Explain why or why not.
(e) Even if the distribution of mothers ages were somewhat skewed, would this confidence interval procedure still be valid with these data? Explain why or why not.