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Normal approximation to total weight above 26 kg

Question

A cheesemaker produces 100100 blocks whose weights in grams are i.i.d. exponential with rate 1250\tfrac1{250}; let T100T_{100} be their total weight. Using the central limit theorem, P[T100>26000]≈Φ(a)\mathbb{P}[T_{100}>26000]\approx\Phi(a), where Φ\Phi is the standard normal CDF. What is aa?

Short answer

a=−2/5a=-2/5. T100T_{100} has mean 2500025000 and standard deviation 100⋅250=2500\sqrt{100}\cdot250=2500, so 2600026000 is 0.40.4 standard deviations above the mean. Then P≈1−Φ(0.4)=Φ(−0.4)\mathbb{P}\approx1-\Phi(0.4)=\Phi(-0.4).

Adapted from QuantQuestions.io; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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