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peachfuzz's avatar

Can someone help me with a problem on my statistics homework?

Asked by peachfuzz (5points) April 28th, 2010

I have a take home quiz for my statistics class and I can’t for the life of me figure out where to start with the last problem. It falls under the subtitle “Normal Approximation to the Binomial” but I don’t ever remember learning how to solve this in class. I need to show my work but I don’t know what equation to use or where to start. The problem is in 5 parts and reads as follow:

AN ELECTION WITH 10,000 VOTES HAD MR. J DEFEATING MS. S BY 9 VOTES

a. How many votes did each candidate get?

b. A total of 100 other votes were not counted and accidentally destroyed. What is the smallest number of these votes that Ms. S would need to have won the election?

c. Assuming that the probability of Ms. S getting any vote is 50%, what is the binomial probability that she got this minimum amount of votes?

d. In fact any number of votes at least that large would have given her the election. Use the normal approximation to the binomial with mean=50 and standard deviation=5 to determine the actual probability that Ms. S might have won the election.

e. Ms. S argues that there should be a new election since she had a good chance of winning if the lost votes had been counted. If you were the appeals judge, how would you rule? Try to include all of the issues you can think of which would be involved in holding a new election.

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8 Answers

Kayak8's avatar

You might want to check out the Fluther thoughts on homework (particularly a take home quiz):

Will you help me with my homework?

We will, provided you’re not asking us for the answer! Our members will be happy to help you think through a problem, suggest approaches, assist you with a sticky spot, explain where you’ve gone wrong, or point you in the right direction for further research. We won’t actually do your homework for you, though, so please don’t ask us to. We’ll help you learn, but we won’t help you cheat! In fact, any posts that give you the answer will be removed. When asking for homework help, give as much detail as possible and tell us what you’ve already tried.

peachfuzz's avatar

I’m not asking for the answer. I want to figure it out myself. but in order to do that I need to know where to start. I am looking for the equation that would lead me to figuring it out. Which is what I asked for. I can insert the numbers myself into the equation and go from there but I don’t know what the equation is to start with so I can’t do anything

Kayak8's avatar

It is a QUIZ!

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peachfuzz's avatar

Besides I googled myself, there are two possible equations N(np, np(1-p)) and np+ – the square root of np(1-p)

Those don’t really help me if I can’t understand what n or p stand for

EmpressPixie's avatar

n is the number of observations. In this case each vote is an observation. p is the probability of a specific outcome for any given observation.

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