A random sample of 300 students is selected from a large group of students who use a computer-equipped
classroom on a regular basis. Occasionally, students leave their USB drive in a computer. Of the 300 students
questioned, 180 said that they write their name on their USB drive. Which of the following is a 98 percent
confidence interval for the proportion of all students using the classroom who write their name on their
USB drive?
A 98 percent confidence interval corresponds to a \(p\)-value of 0.01, which corresponds to a critical value of 2.33.
The proportion of students who write their name is
$$ \hat{p}=\frac{180}{300}=0.6$$
Putting it all together:
$$ \text{Confidence interval} = \text{statistic} \pm (\text{critical value})(\text{standard error of statistic}) $$
$$ \text{Confidence interval} = \hat{p} \pm (\text{critical value })\sqrt{\frac{\hat{p}(1-\hat{p})}{n}} $$
$$ \text{Confidence interval} = \boxed{0.6 \pm 2.33\sqrt{\frac{(0.6)(0.4)}{300}} } $$