Stats: finding probability in normal distribution

Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
2 replies · 15K views
yellowduck
Messages
16
Reaction score
0

Homework Statement



Find Z0 such that P(z > z0) = 0.1234

Homework Equations



The Attempt at a Solution



Z is the mean which is 0. So if Z0 is less than the mean it should be a negative number. Looking at the table 0.1234 does not show up but the closest is 0.1217 which is 0.31.
So Z0 is -0.31?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
It depends on if you're saying from [itex]-\infty \leq z \leq z0[/itex] or [itex]0 \leq z \leq z0[/itex]. The value you found is for the latter (+0.31). It sounds like intuitively you are thinking of the former case, but used the table for the latter case.

Here if you needed another table-- http://www.math.unb.ca/~knight/utility/NormTble.htm
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Z is not the mean, it is the standard normal random variable. You want to find P(Z > z0). So you want to find P(Z<z0) such that it equals to 1-P(Z>z0). 1-0.1234=0.8766, which corresponds to about z0=1.155 from the table David posted