SCENARIO 19-6
a Student Wanted to Find Out the Optimal

question 82

Short Answer

SCENARIO 19-6
A student wanted to find out the optimal strategy to study for a Business Statistics exam. He
constructed the following payoff table based on the mean amount of time he needed to study every
week for the course and the degree of difficulty of the exam. From the information that he gathered
from students who had taken the course, he concluded that there was a 40% probability that the exam
would be easy. $$\begin{array} { | l | l | l | l | } \hline & 16 \text { hours } & 8 \text { hours } & 4 \text { hours } \\\hline \text { Easy Exam } & 40 & 60 & 80 \\\hline \text { Difficult Exam } & 100 & 50 & 0 \\\hline\end{array}$$
-Referring to Scenario 19-6, what is the expected opportunity loss of spending 8 hours per week on
average studying for the exam?

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Definitions:

Sample Mean

The average value of a sample set of data, used as an estimate of the population mean.

Population Distribution

The spread of people across locations, often analyzed for understanding demographics or economic conditions.

Skewed

describes a distribution that is not symmetrical, with a longer tail on one side of the peak than the other.

Normal Distribution

A probability distribution that is symmetrical around the mean, showing that data near the mean are more frequent in occurrence than data far from the mean.