Using these data as his probability distribution for the number of cases, the legal staff coordinator wishes to hire enough interns to research the expected number of cases that will arise. How many intern positions should be requested in the budget?
The regional office of the Environmental Protection Agency annually hires second-year law students as summer interns to help the agency prepare court cases. The agency is under a budget and wishes to keep its costs at a minimum. However, hiring student interns is less costly than hiring full-time employees. Accordingly, the agency wishes to hire the maximum number of students without overstaffing. On the average, it takes two interns all summer to research a case. The interns turn their work over to staff attorneys, who prosecute the cases in the fall when the circuit court convenes. The legal staff coordinator has to place his budget request in June of the preceding summer for the number of positions he wishes to maintain. It is therefore impossible for him to know with certainty how many cases will be researched in the following summer. The data from the preceding summers are as follows
Year: 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996
Cases: 6 4 8 7 5 6 4 5 4 5
Using these data as his probability distribution for the number of cases, the legal staff coordinator wishes to hire enough interns to research the expected number of cases that will arise. How many intern positions should be requested in the budget?
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