Question

The director of library services at a college did a survey of types of books (by subject) in the circulation library. Then she used library records to take a random sample of 888 books checked out last term and classified the books in the sample by subject. The results are shown below.

Subject Area	Percent of Books on Subject in Circulation Library on This Subject	Number of Books in Sample on This Subject
Business	32%	294
Humanities	25%	204
Natural Science	20%	213
Social Science	15%	102
All other subjects	8%	75

Using a 5% level of significance, test the claim that the subject distribution of books in the library fits the distribution of books checked out by students.

(a) What is the level of significance?
0.05

State the null and alternate hypotheses.

H₀: The distributions are the same. & H₁: The distributions are the same.

H₀: The distributions are different. & H₁: The distributions are different.     

H₀: The distributions are different. & H₁: The distributions are the same.

H₀: The distributions are the same. & H₁: The distributions are different.

(b) Find the value of the chi-square statistic for the sample. (Round the expected frequencies to three decimal places. Round the test statistic to three decimal places.)
_____

Are all the expected frequencies greater than 5?

Yes

No     

What sampling distribution will you use?

Student's t

binomial     

normal

uniform

chi-square

What are the degrees of freedom?
_____

(c) Estimate the P-value of the sample test statistic.

P-value > 0.100

0.050 < P-value < 0.100     

0.025 < P-value < 0.050

0.010 < P-value < 0.025

0.005 < P-value < 0.010

P-value < 0.005

(d) Based on your answers in parts (a) to (c), will you reject or fail to reject the null hypothesis of independence?

Since the P-value > α, we fail to reject the null hypothesis.

Since the P-value > α, we reject the null hypothesis.     

Since the P-value ≤ α, we reject the null hypothesis.

Since the P-value ≤ α, we fail to reject the null hypothesis.

(e) Interpret your conclusion in the context of the application.

At the 5% level of significance, the evidence is sufficient to conclude that the subject distribution of books in the library is different from that of books checked out by students.

At the 5% level of significance, the evidence is insufficient to conclude that the subject distribution of books in the library is different from that of books checked out by students.

Answer 1

The statistical software output for this problem is:

From above output:

a) Hypotheses: H₀: The distributions are the same. & H₁: The distributions are different.

b) Test statistic = 16.385

Yes

Chi Square

Degrees of freedom = 4

c) P-value < 0.005

d) Since the P-value ≤ α, we reject the null hypothesis.

e) At the 5% level of significance, the evidence is sufficient to conclude that the subject distribution of books in the library is different from that of books checked out by students.