An archive the questions from Mark's Summer 2018 Stat 185.

Probability with Z-Score Confusion

jthomps6

Im working on a problem and it states this with my answers. My confusion is on part d). I do understand that Z is in absolute but I cannot find any resources on how to deal with this and I keep feeling as though my answer is correct.

Find the probability of each of the following, if Z~N(μ = 0,σ = 1).
(please round any numerical answers to 4 decimal places)

d) P(| Z | < 0.5) = 0.6915

mark

Here’s how to deal with absolute values. First, let’s suppose that |Z| = 0.5. I guess that means that

Z=0.5 \: \text{ or } \: Z = -0.5.

Now, if |Z|<0.5, there are lots of possibilities. We might have Z=0.2, Z=-0.2, z=-0.4, or lots of things. Generally, Z could be anything between +0.5 and -0.5. We might write:

-0.5 < Z < 0.5.

In terms of the material we’ve been studying, a picture illustrating this inequality might look like so:

temp

Thus, you’ve got to find the shaded area.

jthomps6

Thank you, that helped out a lot.