Nick Heilborn and Alex Kline

Mr. Parker
AP Statistics
23 February 2016
Inference for Proportion Project
In this experiment, we aimed to find the true proportion of the population that prefers PC
computers to Macintosh. We predicted that this proportion would be >.5, or that more preferred
PC computer systems to Macintosh due to lower cost (thus higher availability.) We sampled from
the population of Southwest students and staff; samples were drawn from both the cafeteria and
Mr. Wesneys classroom to ensure a variety of responses and help decrease possible bias. Our
parameter p represents the true proportion of students who prefer PC over Macintosh computers.
In order to test and analyze our results, we performed a 1-Proportion Z-interval and a 1-Prportion
Z-Test of Significance. This is due to the nature of our results, as we obtained a proportion.
We sampled 65 individuals from the lunchroom and Mr. Wesneys classroom in order to
obtain a large spread of responses. We collected this data through a poll in which respondents
were asked to indicate which (PC or Macintosh) system they preferred. Respondents were given
a blank slip of paper and were allowed to write their answer anonymously (without indicating
any identifiable features.) In our sample of 65 people, 34 preferred PC to Macintosh (that is, 34
slips indicated PC and 31 indicated Mac.) This translated to a pp-value of 0.5231, where pp is
the sample proportion of people who prefer PC to Macintosh computers. Using this pp-value, we
calculated a sample standard error SE = 0.06195.

The normality conditions for the calculation of a confidence interval are met, because
npp=34.0015>10 and n(1-pp)=30.9985>10. With our restriction to the upper D-building and the
cafeteria, a true SRS of the Southwest student body was not able to be conducted, but we did our
best to make our sample random with what we were allowed. Computation of a 99% confidence
interval yielded (.3635, .6827). At the 99% level, this data has a margin of error of .1596. In
context, we are 99% confident that the true proportion of people who prefer PC over Macintosh
lies between .3635 and .6827.
The normality conditions to conditions to conduct a 1-proptortion z-test are met, because
np=n(1-p)=32.5>10. Again, with our restriction to the upper D-building and the cafeteria, a true
SRS of the Southwest student body was not able to be conducted, but we did our best to make
our sample random with what we were allowed. Are hypotheses are as follows: H0: p=.5 and Ha:
p .5 with p being the true proportion of Southwest students who prefer PC over Macintosh. Our
test statistic came out to be z=.3721. Our p-value was p=.7098. For this test, we used an alpha

level of .05.

With our failure to reject Ho, there is a chance we made an error in the form of a Type 2 error, in
which we fail to reject a false Ho. This means that if we had a Type 2 error, we failed to provide
evidence against the proportion of people who prefer PC to Macintosh computers being 0.5,
despite the fact that the proportion actually is not equal to 0.5. Since our p-value of .7098 > level of .05, we fail to reject Ho. Evidence does not suggest that the true proportion of people
who prefer PC to Macintosh differs from 0.5.