Students are asked to count the number of chocolate chips pe

Students are asked to count the number of chocolate chips per cookie for a class activity. They randomly picked 22 cookies and found that sample mean is 14.77 chocolate chips with a standard deviation of 4.37 chocolate chips. After collecting the data, a student also reports the standard error of the mean S.E. = 4.37/sqrt22= 0.93 chocolate chips. What is the best way to interpret S.E.?

a) 0.93 chocolate chips is a measure of the variability we’d expect in calculations of the average number of chocolate chips per cookie in our samples if we took repeated random samples of 22 cookies.

b) 0.93 chocolate chips is a measure of the variability in the average number of chocolate chips on a cookie across all chocolate chip cookies.

c) The student either made a calculation error or his result is meaningless, because it does not make sense to talk about 0.93 chocolate chips.

d) 0.93 is the standard deviation of the number of chocolate chips on a chocolate chip cookie.

Solution

a) 0.93 chocolate chips is a measure of the variability we’d expect in calculations of the average number of chocolate chips per cookie in our samples if we took repeated random samples of 22 cookies.