Chapter 8.2, Problem 13P

In Problems 13-19. assumethat the population of x values has an approximately normal distribution.

Archaeology: Tree Rings At Burnt Mesa Pueblo, the method of tree-ring dating gave the following years a.d. for an archaeological excavation site (Bandelier Archaeological Excavation Project: Summer 1990 Excavations at Burnt Mesa Pueblo, edited by Kohler. Washington State University):

1189 1271 1267 1272 1268 1316 1275 1317 1275

(a) Use a calculator with mean and standard deviation keys to verify that the sample mean year is $\bar{x}\approx 1272$, with sample standard deviation

$s\approx 37$ years.

(b) Find a 90% confidence interval for the mean of all tree-ring dates from this archaeological site.

(c) Interpretation What does the confidence interval mean in the context of this problem?