[KKKQ2023 ENGINEERING STATISTICS] SEM2 2024/2025

Exercises (Chapter 9_set 1)

1. A manufacturer has developed a new fishing line, which he claims has a mean breaking
strength of 15 kilograms with a standard deviation of 0.5 kilogram. To test the hypothesis
that   15 kilograms against the alternate that   15 kilograms, a random sample of 50
lines will be tested. The critical region is defined to be x  14.9.
(a) Find the probability of committing a type I error when H 0 is true.

(b) Evaluate  for the alternatives   14.8 and   14.9.

2. Runger and Pignatiello (1991) consider a plastic injection molding process for a part with
a target critical width dimension of 100 and historic standard of 8. Periodically, clogs
form in one of the feeder lines, causing the mean width to change. As a result, the
operator periodically takes random samples of size four.
(a) A recent sample yielded a sample mean of 101.4. Conduct a hypothesis test to
determine whether the mean width has increased. Use a 0.01 significance level.
(b) Find the p-value associated with the test in part (a).
(c) Construct a 99% confidence interval for this situation. Use this interval to
determine whether the mean width has changed.
(d) Find the power of test to detect a change in the true mean width to 102.
(e) Find the sample size required to achieve a power of 0.8 when the true mean is 102.

3. The daily yield for a local chemical plant has averaged 880 tons for last several years.
The quality control manager would like to know whether this average has changed in
recent months. She randomly selects 50 days from the computer database and computes
the average and standard deviation of the n = 50 yields as x  871 tons and s  21 tons,
respectively.
(a) Test the appropriate hypothesis using   0.05.
(b) Calculate the p-value for this test of hypothesis.
(c) Calculate  and the power of test 1    when  is actually equal to 870 tons.
 [KKKQ2023 ENGINEERING STATISTICS] SEM2 2024/2025

4. Yaschin (1992) studied the thicknesses of metal wires produced in a chip manufacturing
process. Ideally, these wires should have a target thickness of 8 microns. These are the
sample data:
8.4 8.0 7.8 8.0 7.9 7.7 8.0 7.9 8.2 7.9
7.9 8.2 7.9 7.8 7.9 7.9 8.0 8.0 7.6 8.2
8.1 8.1 8.0 8.0 8.3 7.8 8.2 8.3 8.0 8.0
7.8 7.9 8.4 7.7 8.0 7.9 8.0 7.7 7.7 7.8
7.8 8.2 7.7 8.3 7.8 8.3 7.8 8.0 8.2 7.8

(a) Conduct the two-sided hypothesis test using a 0.05 significance level.
(b) Conduct a 95% confidence interval for the true mean thickness.

5. One method for straightening wire before coiling it to make a spring is called “roller
straightening.” Suppose a sample of 16 wires is selected and each is tested to determine
the tensile strength (N/mm2). The resulting sample mean and standard deviation are 2160
and 30, respectively.
(a) The mean tensile strength for springs made using spinner straightening is 2150
N/mm2. Does the data support the claim that the mean tensile strength for the roller
method exceeds 2150? (Use   0.10 ) Justify your answer.
(b) What is the p-value?
(c) Explain how the question in part (a) could be answered with a confidence interval.
6. A new process for producing synthetic diamonds can be operated at a profitable level
only if the average weight of the diamonds is greater than 0.5 karat. To evaluate the
profitability of the process, six diamonds are generated, with recorded weight 0.46, 0.61,
0.52, 0.48, 0.57, and 0.54 karat.
(a) Using 0.05, do the six measurements present sufficient evidence to indicate that
the average weight of the diamonds produced by the process is in excess of 0.5
karat?
 [KKKQ2023 ENGINEERING STATISTICS] SEM2 2024/2025

(b) Calculate the appropriate bound for .

7. Suppose that the owner of a service station will hire a second server if it can be shown
that the average service time exceeds 8 minutes. The following data give the service
times (in minutes) of a 28 customers of this queuing system.

8.6, 9.4, 5.0, 4.1, 3.7, 11.4, 10.0, 7.6, 14.4, 12.2, 11.0, 14.4, 9.3, 10.5,
10.3, 7.7, 8.3, 6.4, 9.2, 5.7, 7.9, 9.4, 9.0, 13.3, 11.6, 10.0, 9.5, 6.6

(a) Do these data support the claim that the mean service time is greater than 8
minutes? (Use   0.05 ) Justify your answer.
(b) What is the p-value?
(c) Explain how the question in part (a) could be answered with a confidence interval.

8. Past experience indicates that the time for high school seniors to complete a standardized
test is a normal random variable with a mean of 35 minutes. If a random sample of 20
high school seniors took an average of 33.1 minutes to complete this test with a standard
deviation of 4.3 minutes,
(a) test the hypothesis at the 0.05 level that   35 minutes against the alternative that
  35 minutes.
(b) What is the p-value for this test?

9. A manufacturer of car batteries claims that the life of his batteries is approximately
normally distributed with a standard deviation equal to 0.9 year. If a random sample of 10
of these batteries has a standard deviation of 1.2 years,
(a) do you think that   0.9 year? (   0.05 )
(b) find a 95% confidence interval for the standard deviation of the batteries.
 [KKKQ2023 ENGINEERING STATISTICS] SEM2 2024/2025

10. A soft-drink dispensing machine is said to be out of control if the variance of the contents
exceeds 1.15 deciliters. If a random sample of 25 drinks from this machine has a variance
of 2.03 deciliters, does this indicate at the 0.05 level of significance that the machine is
out of control? Assume that the contents are approximately normally distributed.

11. Studies show that the concentration of PCBs is much higher in malignant breast tissue
than in normal breast tissue. A study of 50 women with breast cancer reveals an average
PCB concentration of 22.8  10 4 gram, with a standard deviation of 4.8  104 gram.
(a) At 5% level of significance, do the data support the claims that the mean
concentration of PCBs less than 24 104 gram?
(b) Calculate the p-value? What can you conclude?
(c) Construct a 95% upper-bound confidence interval for the mean concentration of
PCBs.
(d) Construct a 99% confidence interval on the standard deviation.

12. A manufacturer of industrial light bulbs like its bulbs to have a mean life that is
acceptable to its customers and a variation in life that is relatively small. If some bulbs
fail too early in their life, customers become annoyed and shift to competitive products.
Large variation above the mean reduce replacement sales, and variation in general
disrupts customers’ replacement schedules. A sample of 20 bulbs tested produced the
following lengths of life (in hours):
2100 2302 1951 2067 2415 1883 2101 2146 2278 2019
1924 2183 2077 2392 2286 2501 1946 2161 2253 1827
The manufacturer wishes to control the variability in length of life so that  is less than
150 hours. Do the data provide sufficient evidence to indicate that the manufacturer is
achieving this goal? Test using   0.01.