A soft-drink machine is regulated so that the amount of drink dispensed averages 240 milliliters with a standard deviation of 15 milliliters. Periodically, the machine is checked by taking a sample of 40 drinks and computing the average content. If the mean of the 40 drinks is a value within 2 standard deviations from the mean , the machine is thought to be operating satisfactorily; otherwise, adjustments are made. If the company official found the mean of 40 drinks to be 236 milliliters and concluded that the machine needed no adjustment. Was this a reasonable decision?

Definition Definition Measure of central tendency that is the average of a given data set. The mean value is evaluated as the quotient of the sum of all observations by the sample size. The mean, in contrast to a median, is affected by extreme values. Very large or very small values can distract the mean from the center of the data. Arithmetic mean: The most common type of mean is the arithmetic mean. It is evaluated using the formula: μ = 1 N ∑ i = 1 N x i Other types of means are the geometric mean, logarithmic mean, and harmonic mean. Geometric mean: The nth root of the product of n observations from a data set is defined as the geometric mean of the set: G = x 1 x 2 ... x n n Logarithmic mean: The difference of the natural logarithms of the two numbers, divided by the difference between the numbers is the logarithmic mean of the two numbers. The logarithmic mean is used particularly in heat transfer and mass transfer. ln x 2 − ln x 1 x 2 − x 1 Harmonic mean: The inverse of the arithmetic mean of the inverses of all the numbers in a data set is the harmonic mean of the data. 1 1 x 1 + 1 x 2 + ...