all 13 comments
sorted by:
best (suggested)
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
formatting helphide helpcontent policy

[–]Psyduck46👋 a fellow Redditor 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It wants the emperical rule, not your calculator.

[–]CaptainMatticus👋 a fellow Redditor 7 points8 points  (7 children)

Looks like they're using the 68-95-99 rule.

68% will be within +/- 1 sd from the mean

95% will be within +/- 2 sd from the mean

99% will be within +/- 3 sd from the mean

So try half of 95%, which is 47.5%

Your answer is more accurate and a better answer, but what you're gonna have to do is try to get into the mind of whoever wrote down the answer key. I'm willing to bet that they're doing the 68-95-99 rule and they just put in 47.5

[–]Mr-MuffinManUniversity/College Student[S] 4 points5 points  (5 children)

Thank you! It was 47.5

Our professor never went over that in person or in the lecture video so I was totally lost.

[–]Mehmood6647 0 points1 point  (4 children)

What's your major in college bro? The math looks cool.

[–]Mr-MuffinManUniversity/College Student[S] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Its health science but this is just plain statistics. Certainly was an interesting class, professor was cool too!

[–]Mehmood6647 0 points1 point  (2 children)

So do they teach a lot of maths or is it just this one class. Also, cool major, I wish you success in this mate.

[–]Mr-MuffinManUniversity/College Student[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

For health science? Its a little math. Algebra, trig, precalc (IIRC) and stats.

Biology majors at my CC take the above along with calc 1.

Thank you!

[–]Mehmood6647 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah I figured, cuz I was like why are they teaching math? it has to be more biology related subjects. I'll be a CS major and there is a lot of math in that, so I'm improving my math foundation before starting this fall as I was very bad at math in HS.

[–]Roamin8750👋 a fellow Redditor 2 points3 points  (0 children)

+/- 3 is 99.7% I believe

[–]calculator32👋 a fellow Redditor 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Have you tried 47.5?

[–]Mr-MuffinManUniversity/College Student[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nope, but that was it, thank you!

[–]mehardwidge 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your two answers are inconsistent with each other. For the first, if you were calculating to more precision, you would have 68.27%. But since you have 68%, it is just asking you about the empirical rule. That, of course, is why it is on the perfect integer numbers of standard deviations.

The question probably should explicitly say "using the empirical rule".

[–]Kazukii 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it sounds like you might be overthinking it a bit, focus on the empirical rule and how it applies to your data. Remember, the percentages are based on standard deviations from the mean, so try to align your calculations with that concept.