QuestionQuestion 13
In a recent poll, 580 people were asked if they liked dogs, and 68\% said they did. Find the Margin of Error for this poll, at the confidence level. Give your answer to four decimal places if possible.
Studdy Solution
STEP 1
What is this asking?
We need to figure out how much the poll results *could* be off by, given the number of people asked and the confidence level.
Watch out!
Don't mix up the percentage of people who like dogs with the margin of error!
We're not looking at how many people like dogs, but how *accurate* our measurement is.
STEP 2
1. Find the critical value.
2. Calculate the standard error.
3. Compute the margin of error.
STEP 3
For a 99% confidence level, we look up the z-score.
This tells us how many standard deviations away from the mean we need to go to capture 99% of the data.
It's like drawing a line in the sand and saying, "We're 99% sure the *true* percentage of dog-lovers is somewhere in here!"
STEP 4
For a 99% confidence level, our critical value, , is **2.576**.
We can get this from a z-table or a calculator.
STEP 5
The standard error tells us how spread out our sample results are likely to be.
Think of it like the "average" amount our sample percentage might differ from the *true* percentage.
STEP 6
The formula for standard error is: Where is the proportion from the sample (as a decimal) and is the number of people surveyed.
STEP 7
In our case, (68% as a decimal) and .
Let's plug those in:
So our standard error is approximately **0.01937**.
STEP 8
Now, we combine our critical value and standard error to find the margin of error.
This tells us the *range* within which we're 99% confident the true percentage lies.
STEP 9
The formula for margin of error is:
STEP 10
Plugging in our values:
STEP 11
Rounding to four decimal places, we get **0.0499**.
STEP 12
The margin of error is **0.0499**.
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