Joe is a fish thrower who throws fish into a chute at a processing plant. Joe misses the chute 20% of the time. Using the normal approximation with the continuity correction, which of these correctly represents the probability Joe will miss fewer than 80 times if he throws 500 fish?

Verified Answer :

Let \(X\) denote the number of times Joe misses the chute. The distribution for \(X\) is binomial with \(n=500\) trials and success probability \(p=0.2\) (successful in regards to missing the chute).

You then know that the average number of times that he misses is \(np=500\times0.2=100\), with a standard deviation of \(\sqrt{np(1-p)}\approx8.944\). These parameters will come in handy in just a moment.

You're asked to computeĀ \(\mathbb P(X<80)\). With the continuity correction, this is approximated by

\(\mathbb P(X<80)\approx\mathbb P(X<79.5)=\mathbb P\left(\dfrac{X-100}{8.944}<\dfrac{79.5-100}{8.944}\right)=\mathbb P(Z<-2.292)\approx0.011=1.1\%\)