When an audit must be conducted that involves a tedious examination of a large inventory, the audit may be very costly and time consuming if each item in the inventory must be examined. In such situations, the auditor frequently obtains a random sample of items from the complete inventory and uses the results of an audit of the sampled items to check the validity of the company's financial statement. A large company€™s financial statement claims an inventory that averages $ 600 per item. The following data are the auditor€™s assessment of a random sample of 75 items from the company€™s inventory. The values resulting from the audit are rounded to the nearest dollar.

a. Estimate the mean value of an item in the inventory using a 95% confidence interval.
b. Is there substantial evidence (a = .01) that the mean value of an item in the inventory is less than $ 600?
c. What is the target population for the above inferences?
d. Would normal distribution€“based procedures be appropriate for answering the above questions?

303 547 1368 493 984 507 148 2,546 738 83 2 135 274 74 1.472 399 1,784 71 751 136 571 147 282 2,039 1909 748 188 548 1 2 102 618 129 1,324 1428 469 102 454 1,059 939 303 600 234 514 17 551 293 1,395 7 28 2 973 506 5 812 1,290 685 447 1 35 252 1,526 464 5 67 99 67 259 67 248 3,215 3 33 41