Fission tracks are trails found in uranium-bearing minerals, left by fragments released during fission events. An article reports that fifteen tracks on one rock specimen had an average track length of 12 μm with a standard deviation of 2 μm. Assuming this to be a random sample from an approximately normal population, find a 99% confidence interval for the mean track length for this rock specimen. Round the answers to three decimal places. The 99% confidence interval is ( , ).

So on this case the 99% confidence interval would be given by (10.463;13.537)    

Step-by-step explanation:

Previous concepts

A confidence interval is "a range of values that’s likely to include a population value with a certain degree of confidence. It is often expressed a % whereby a population means lies between an upper and lower interval".

The margin of error is the range of values below and above the sample statistic in a confidence interval.

Normal distribution, is a "probability distribution that is symmetric about the mean, showing that data near the mean are more frequent in occurrence than data far from the mean".

represent the sample mean

population mean (variable of interest)

s=2 represent the sample standard deviation

n=15 represent the sample size  

Solution to the problem

The confidence interval for the mean is given by the following formula:

  (1)

In order to calculate the critical value we need to find first the degrees of freedom, given by:

Since the Confidence is 0.99 or 99%, the value of and , and we can use excel, a calculator or a table to find the critical value. The excel command would be: "=-T.INV(0.005,14)".And we see that

Now we have everything in order to replace into formula (1):

So on this case the 99% confidence interval would be given by (10.463;13.537)    

a complex number is a number that can be expressed in the form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers, and i is a solution of the equation x2 = −1. because no real number satisfies this equation, i is called an imaginary number. has no real solution, since the square of a real number cannot be negative.