For each probability and percentile problem, draw the picture. According to a study by Dr. John McDougall of his live-in weight loss program at St. Helena Hospital, the people who follow his program lose between six and 15 pounds a month until they approach trim body weight. Let’s suppose that the weight loss is uniformly distributed. We are interested in the weight loss of a randomly selected individual following the program for one month. How many pounds would a participant of the program have to lose in order to be in the 90th percentile?
Continuous Probability Distributions
Probability distributions are of two types, which are continuous probability distributions and discrete probability distributions. A continuous probability distribution contains an infinite number of values. For example, if time is infinite: you could count from 0 to a trillion seconds, billion seconds, so on indefinitely. A discrete probability distribution consists of only a countable set of possible values.
Normal Distribution
Suppose we had to design a bathroom weighing scale, how would we decide what should be the range of the weighing machine? Would we take the highest recorded human weight in history and use that as the upper limit for our weighing scale? This may not be a great idea as the sensitivity of the scale would get reduced if the range is too large. At the same time, if we keep the upper limit too low, it may not be usable for a large percentage of the population!
For each
John McDougall of his live-in weight loss program at St. Helena Hospital, the people who
follow his program lose between six and 15 pounds a month until they approach trim body
weight. Let’s suppose that the weight loss is uniformly distributed. We are interested in the
weight loss of a randomly selected individual following the program for one month.
How many pounds would a participant of the program have to lose in order to be in the
90th percentile? Round your answer to the nearest pound
Trending now
This is a popular solution!
Step by step
Solved in 2 steps
