Suzanne is a member of a sports club - AQA - A-Level Maths Mechanics - Question 17 - 2018 - Paper 3
Question 17
Suzanne is a member of a sports club.
For each sport she competes in, she wins half of the matches.
17 (a) After buying a new tennis racket Suzanne plays 10 matches... show full transcript
Worked Solution & Example Answer:Suzanne is a member of a sports club - AQA - A-Level Maths Mechanics - Question 17 - 2018 - Paper 3
Step 1
17 (a) Investigate whether Suzanne's new racket has made a difference
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Answer
To investigate this claim, we first state the hypotheses:
Null Hypothesis, H0: The probability of winning a match with the new racket is the same as before, p=0.5.
Alternative Hypothesis, H1: The probability of winning a match with the new racket is different, p=0.5.
Next, we will use the Binomial distribution model, with the number of matches played ( n = 10 ) and the number of wins ( k = 7 ). Using the binomial probability formula:
P(X=k)=(kn)pk(1−p)n−k
The probabilities we are interested in are P(X≤6) and P(X≥7), which we calculate separately.
Calculate P(X≤6):
Using cumulative binomial tables or a calculator, we find:
P(X≤6)=1−P(X≥7)
This gives us P(X≤6)≈0.8281 or 0.172.
Compare this result with the significance level of 0.10:
Since P(X≥7) is roughly 0.172, and 0.172>0.10, we do not reject the null hypothesis.
Conclusion:
There is insufficient evidence that Suzanne's new racket has made a difference.
Step 2
17 (b) Find the minimum number of matches Suzanne must win
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For the second part, we again denote the number of matches played as ( n = 20 ). We need to estimate the boundary for winning a proportion of matches to conclude there is a significant improvement at the 10% level of significance:
Let's denote ( k ) as the number of wins needed for significance.
The requirements state that we want:
P(X≥k)>0.1
We express this in terms of the cumulative binomial probability:
Calculate P(X≤k−1), ensuring this value is less than 0.9:
Begin testing values for ( k ):
For k=14:
Cumulative Probability ( P(X \leq 13) ) is about 0.5771, which shows that P(X≥14)=1−0.5771=0.4229>0.1. Hence, it is too low.
When evaluating ( k = 15 ), ( P(X \leq 14) ) results in approximately 0.6908. Thus, (16)⇒P(X≤15)≈0.8254. This is also too low.
Finally, checking ( k = 17 ), we find this meets the condition.
Thus, the minimum number of matches Suzanne must win is 14 for her to conclude that the new racket has improved her performance.