Q.6.112 - Elementary Statistics

Question

Emergency Room Traffic. Desert Samaritan Hospital in Mesa, Arizona, keeps records of emergency room traftic. Those records reveal that the times between arriving patients have a mean of $8.7$ minutes with a standard deviation of $8.7$ minutes. Based solely on the values of these two parameters, explain why it is unreasonable to assume that the times between arriving patients is normally distributed or even approximately so.

Step-by-Step Solution

Answer

The variable under consideration is not an approximately normal distribution.

Step 1: Given Information

Given in the question that, 

Mean $=8.7$ minutes. ,

Standard deviation, $=8.7$minutes.

Step 2: Explanation

The variable under consideration has the same mean and standard deviation values as the data. As a result, it is illogical to assume that the variable in question is normally distributed.

In fact, the intervals between patients' arrivals resemble an exponential distribution.

As a result, the variable in question does not have an essentially normal distribution.