Question: How fast is Google? According to an article from Google’s official blog, “Google is fast — a typical search returns results in less than 0.2 seconds.” (Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/powering-google-search.html) Now, we are going to estimate the average search time of Google.

a. Collect data by asking Google questions. We would like to estimate the average search time to all possible questions, but that’s a mission impossible. So we have to randomly choose some questions to ask Google. For example, if you search “How do I heal a broken heart?” at Google, it returns with “About 28,200,000 results (0.47 seconds)”, which is shown before all the search results. Here, the “0.47 seconds” is the search time of this question. Fill in the following table of 10 questions, and record the search time. If you asked more than 10 questions, attach the rest of the table in a separate sheet. In case that you find it hard to compose the questions, here is an interesting article on the world’s most popular questions that may give you some idea. (http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/topquestions/). Note that the complexity of the terms you ask Google affects the search time, so please compose the question in a complete sentence with a question mark rather than only a word or a phrase.

b. Assuming the search time is normally distributed, find and interpret a 95% confidence interval of the average search time at Google.

c. Based on your confidence interval, do you believe the average search time is less than 0.2 seconds?