Question

The personnel department of ZTel, a large communications company, is reconsidering its hiring policy. Each applicant for a job must take a standard exam, and the hire or no-hire decision depends at least in part on the result of the exam. The scores of all applicants have been examined closely. They are approximately normally distributed with mean 500 and standard deviation 50. The current hiring policy occurs in two phases. The 1st phase separates all applicants into three categories: automatic accepts, automatic rejects, and maybes. The automatic accepts are those whose test scores are 600 or above. The automatic rejects are those whose test scores are 420 or below. All other applicants (the maybes) are passed on to a 2nd phase where their previous job experience, special talents, and other factors are used as hiring criteria. To calculate the percentage of applicants who are automatic accepts, given the current standards, which of the following functions should be entered in EXCEL?

Answer 1

ANS.

Mean = 500, Std. deviation = 50

Applicants who are automatic accepts (X) = 600 or above

The percentage of applicants who are automatic accepts = ?

In Excel we calculate is using the formula:-

= 1 - NORM.DIST(x,mean,standard_dev,cumulative)

• where, for cumulative,

TRUE - cumulative ditribution function

FALSE - probability mass function

= 1 - NORM.DIST(600,500,50,TRUE)

and then Enter , you will get your answer.

0.02275

The percentage of applicants who are automatic accepts = 0.02275