A certain test preparation course is designed to help students improve their scores on the USMLE exam. A mock exam is given at the beginning and end of the course to determine the effectiveness of the course. The following measurements are the net change in 3 students' scores on the exam after completing the course: 15,20,18 Using these data, construct a 90% confidence interval for the average net change in a student's score after completing the course. Assume the population is approximately normal. Step 3 of 4 : Find the critical value that should be used in constructing the confidence interval. Round your answer to three decimal places.

So on this case the 90% confidence interval would be given by (13.427;21.913)    

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 for the sample  

population mean (variable of interest)

s represent the sample standard deviation

n 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 mean and the sample deviation we can use the following formulas:  

(2)  

(3)  

The mean calculated for this case is

The sample deviation calculated

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

Since the Confidence is 0.90 or 90%, 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(0.05,2)".And we see that

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

So on this case the 90% confidence interval would be given by (13.427;21.913)    

answer: b.

step-by-step explanation:

the y coordinate for point b is 0, and answer b is the only one with that y coordinate.