Additional Assessment Materials

Summer 2021

Pearson Edexcel GCE in Mathematics

9MA0 (Applied) (Public release version)

Resource Set 1: Topic 4

Statistical distributions (Test 2)
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Additional Assessment Materials, Summer 2021

All the material in this publication is copyright

© Pearson Education Ltd 2021

General guidance to Additional Assessment Materials for use in 2021

Context
 Additional Assessment Materials are being produced for GCSE, AS and A
levels (with the exception of Art and Design).
 The Additional Assessment Materials presented in this booklet are
an optional part of the range of evidence teachers may use when deciding
on a candidate’s grade.
 2021 Additional Assessment Materials have been drawn from previous
examination materials, namely past papers.
 Additional Assessment Materials have come from past papers both
published (those materials available publicly) and unpublished (those
currently under padlock to our centres) presented in a different format to
allow teachers to adapt them for use with candidate.

Purpose
 The purpose of this resource to provide qualification-specific sets/groups
of questions covering the knowledge, skills and understanding relevant to
this Pearson qualification.
 This document should be used in conjunction with the mapping guidance
which will map content and/or skills covered within each set of
questions.
 These materials are only intended to support the summer 2021 series.
1. A local sports centre has showers with two temperature settings, warm and hot.

On the warm setting, the water temperature may be modelled by a Normal distribution with
mean 30 C and standard deviation 2 C.

(a) Using the model, find the probability that the next time the shower is used on the warm
setting ,the water temperature is

(i) exactly 31 C,

(ii) more than 31 C.

(2)

The sports centre manager thinks that a water temperature of more than 33 C is too high for
the warm setting.

She tests the water temperature on the warm setting on 5 randomly selected days.

Given that the probability of the water temperature being more than 33 C is 0.0668.

(b) find the probability of the water temperature being more than 33 C

(i) on only the first of these 5 days,

(2)

(ii) on more than 1 of these 5 days.

(3)

On the hot setting, the water temperature may be modelled by a Normal distribution with
standard deviation 1.5 C.

The probability that the water temperature is more than 42 C is 0.0005.

(c) Find the mean water temperature on this setting, giving your answer to 1 decimal place.
(4)

(Total for Question 1 is 11 marks)

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2. A machine cuts strips of metal to length L cm, where L is normally distributed with standard
deviation 0.5 cm.

Strips with length either less than 49 cm or greater than 50.75 cm cannot be used.

Given that 2.5% of the cut lengths exceed 50.98 cm,

(a) find the probability that a randomly chosen strip of metal can be used.
(5)

Ten strips of metal are selected at random.

 (b) Find the probability fewer than 4 of these strips cannot be used.
(2)

A second machine cuts strips of metal of length X cm, where X is normally distributed with
standard deviation 0.6 cm.

A random sample of 15 strips cut by this second machine was found to have a mean length
of 50.4 cm.

(c) Stating your hypotheses clearly and using a 1% level of significance, test whether or not
the mean length of all the strips, cut by the second machine, is greater than 50.1 cm.
(5)
(Total for Question 2 is 12 marks)
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3. A large number of cyclists take part in a cycling time trial.

A random sample of these cyclists are selected and their times, in minutes, are summarised in
the following statistics

x = 1680, x2 = 47654.4, n = 60

(a) Calculate, for this sample, the value of

(i) the mean time,

(1)

(ii) the standard deviation of the times.

(2)

Historically, the mean time for cyclists on this time trial has been 27 minutes and 30 seconds.

Lucy is watching the time trial and believes that the mean time of cyclists in this time trial is
greater than the mean time of cyclists in previous time trials.

The times of cyclists on this time trial are modelled by a Normal distribution with standard
deviation 3 minutes.

(b) Test, at the 5% level of significance, whether or not this sample provides evidence to
support Lucy’s belief. You should state your hypotheses and show your working clearly.
(5)

Speedy Wheels cycling club entered its 5 fastest riders and 5 beginners to take part in the time
trial.

The fastest 20% of the cyclists in the time trial are invited to compete in a race the following
week.
 (i) Explain, with specific reference to the parameter p, why the distribution B(10,0.2)
might not be reasonable to model the number of these Speedy Wheels cycling club
members who are invited to compete in the race.
(2)

(ii) Suggest how to improve the model for the number of these Speedy Wheels cycling
club members invited to compete in the race.
(1)

(Total for Question 3 is 11 marks)

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4. A company has a customer services call centre. The company believes that the time taken to
complete a call to the call centre may be modelled by a normal distribution with mean
16 minutes and standard deviation σ minutes.

Given that 10% of the calls take longer than 22 minutes,

(a) show that, to 3 significant figures, the value of σ is 4.68.

(3)

(b) Calculate the percentage of calls that take less than 13 minutes.
(1)

A supervisor in the call centre claims that the mean call time is less than 16 minutes. He
collects data on his own call times.

 20% of the supervisor’s calls take more than 17 minutes to complete.

 10% of the supervisor’s calls take less than 8 minutes to complete.

Assuming that the time the supervisor takes to complete a call may be modelled by a normal
distribution,

(c) estimate the mean and the standard deviation of the time taken by the supervisor to
complete a call.
(6)

(d) State, giving a reason, whether or not the calculations in part (c) support the supervisor’s
claim.
(1)
(Total for Question 4 is 11 marks)
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5. A fast food company has a scratchcard competition. It has ordered scratchcards for the
competition and requested that 45% of the scratchcards be winning scratchcards.

A random sample of 20 of the scratchcards is collected from each of 8 of the fast food
company’s stores.
(a) Assuming that 45% of the scratchcards are winning scratchcards, calculate the
probability that in at least 2 of the 8 stores, 12 or more of the scratchcards are winning
scratchcards.
(5)

(b) Write down 2 conditions under which the normal distribution may be used as an
approximation to the binomial distribution.
(1)

A random sample of 300 of the scratchcards is taken. Assuming that 45% of all the
scratchcards are winning scratchcards,

(c) use a normal approximation to find the probability that at most 122 of these 300
scratchcards are winning scratchcards.
(4)

Given that 122 of the 300 scratchcards are winning scratchcards,

(d) comment on whether or not there is evidence at the 5% significance level that the
proportion of the company’s scratchcards that are winning scratchcards is different from
45%.
(Total for Question 5 is 10 marks)
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