What is the true normal human body temperature?

Background

The mean normal body temperature was held to be 37$^{\circ}$C or 98.6$^{\circ}$F for more than 120 years since it was first conceptualized and reported by Carl Wunderlich in a famous 1868 book. In 1992, this value was revised to 36.8$^{\circ}$C or 98.2$^{\circ}$F.

Exercise

In this exercise, you will analyze a dataset of human body temperatures and employ the concepts of hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, and statistical significance.

Answer the following questions in this notebook below and submit to your Github account.

1. Is the distribution of body temperatures normal?
   • Remember that this is a condition for the CLT, and hence the statistical tests we are using, to apply.
2. Is the true population mean really 98.6 degrees F?
   • Bring out the one sample hypothesis test! In this situation, is it approriate to apply a z-test or a t-test? How will the result be different?
3. At what temperature should we consider someone's temperature to be "abnormal"?
   • Start by computing the margin of error and confidence interval.
4. Is there a significant difference between males and females in normal temperature?
   • Set up and solve for a two sample hypothesis testing.

You can include written notes in notebook cells using Markdown:

• In the control panel at the top, choose Cell > Cell Type > Markdown
• Markdown syntax: http://nestacms.com/docs/creating-content/markdown-cheat-sheet

Resources

• Information and data sources: http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/datasets/normtemp.txt, http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/jse_data_archive.htm
• Markdown syntax: http://nestacms.com/docs/creating-content/markdown-cheat-sheet