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Stats work: Distribution for a random variable.

Hey everybody, I've got a little statistics question that I'd really appreciate some help with.

While carrying out a survey on the question "do you intend on going abroad this year?", with a sample population of 100 people, 48 responded "yes" to the question, 46 responded "no" to the question, and the remainder replied "don't know".

What I need to ask is, under the null hypothesis that in fact the number of "yes" respondents equals the number of "no" respondents, what type of distribution does X take, where X is the number of people who are going on holiday?

Thanks for any help you can give
Jon
Reply 1
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I thought it might have been a binomial distribution, but others in the class suggested it was a Normal distribution, and some a t-distribution.
I don't think it's a normal distribution because it's discrete data, not continuous.

If you imagine the graph of the distribution, it would have two tall peaks with a low bit in the middle. The x-axis would go from no (-1) to don't know (0) to yes (+1). I'm not sure what the distribution is called though.
For what it's worth (as in I don't know the definitive answer).

I'd discount the don't knows, which reduces your sample to 94, and then treat as binomial. Use a Normal approximation if necessary.
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Original post by ghostwalker
For what it's worth (as in I don't know the definitive answer).

I'd discount the don't knows, which reduces your sample to 94, and then treat as binomial. Use a Normal approximation if necessary.


Ok thanks.

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