Healthy people have body temperatures that are normally distributed with a mean of 98.20∘F and a standard deviation of 0.62∘F.

A hospital wants to select a minimum temperature for requiring further medical tests. What should that temperature be, if we want only 2.5 % of healthy people to exceed it?

Question

Healthy people have body temperatures that are normally distributed with a mean of 98.20∘F and a standard deviation of 0.62∘F.

A hospital wants to select a minimum temperature for requiring further medical tests. What should that temperature be, if we want only 2.5 % of healthy people to exceed it?

campbell_st · Answer

isn't 2.5%  the same as 2 standard deviations from the mean in a normal distribution.  Haven't done this for years... 

so its 98.2 +- 1.24

anonymous · Answer

Conceptually, how does 2.5% relate to "two standard deviations?"

campbell_st · Answer

the normal distribution... 67% of all data is with 1 standard deviation of the mean... 2 standard deviations contains about something in the 95+% and 3 standard deviations contains 99.9%... or figures like that