Home Sweet Home: using confidence intervals to analyse and compare home prices

Part A: Organizing the Data

  1. Download the Mount Pleasent Ral Estate data set in chapter 9:
    https://www.hawkeslearning.com/statistics/dbs2/datasets.html
  2. for the variable List price, calculate the sample mean, the sample standard deviation, and the sample size for the three different subdivisions.(Carolina Park, Dunes West, and Park West) create a table to present the requested statistics in an organized manner. round to the nearest dollar for the sample standard deviation and the mean.

part b: creating the confidence intervals

  1. based on the data set and the information you have, determine which confidence interval you should use, a z or a t interval.
  2. find the critical value for a 95% confidence level for each subdivision for the variable list price. State your critical values.
  3. construct an interval to estimate the true average list price for each subdivision with 95% confidence.
Full Answer Section

Finding the critical values for a 95% confidence level

The critical values for a 95% confidence level with degrees of freedom (df) = n - 1 are:

Subdivision Degrees of Freedom (df) Critical Value
Carolina Park 27 2.056
Dunes West 30 1.960
Park West 21 2.064

Constructing the confidence intervals

The formula for a confidence interval for the mean is:

mean ± (critical value * standard deviation) / √n

Using this formula, we can construct the following confidence intervals:

Subdivision Confidence Interval
Carolina Park $418,499 ± (2.056 * $55,209) / √28
Dunes West $381,984 ± (1.960 * $41,591) / √31
Park West $345,511 ± (2.064 * $31,519) / √22

Interpretation

We can be 95% confident that the true average list price for homes in Carolina Park is between $360

Sample Answer

Part A: Organizing the Data

Subdivision Sample Mean Sample Standard Deviation Sample Size
Carolina Park $418,499 $55,209 28
Dunes West $381,984 $41,591 31
Park West $345,511 $31,519 22

Part B: Creating the Confidence Intervals

Determining the type of confidence interval (z or t) to use

Since the sample sizes are relatively small (n < 30), we should use a t-distribution to construct the confidence intervals.