Sophia who took the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scored 160 on the Verbal Reasoning section and 157 on the Quantitative Reasoning section. The mean score for Verbal Reasoning section for all test takers was 151 with a standard deviation of 7, and the mean score for the Quantitative Reasoning was 153 with a standard deviation of 7.67. Suppose that both distributions are nearly normal. (a) Write down the short-hand for these two normal distributions.
(b) What is Sophia’s Z-score on the Verbal Reasoning section? On the Quantitative Reasoning
section? Draw a standard normal distribution curve and mark these two Z-scores.
(c) What do these Z-scores tell you?
(d) Relative to others, which section did she do better on?
(e) Find her percentile scores for the two exams.
(f) What percent of the test takers did better than her on the Verbal Reasoning section? On the
Quantitative Reasoning section?
(g) Explain why simply comparing raw scores from the two sections could lead to an incorrect
conclusion as to which section a student did better on.
(h) If the distributions of the scores on these exams are not nearly normal, would your answers to
parts (b) - (f) change? Explain your reasoning.