normal distribution using PHSTAT: price of long-term bonds

[jea252]

My Professor teaches normal probability by using PHSTAT. This is a homework question that I am in need of assistance.

A financial analyst states that the price of X of a long term government bond one year later is normally distributed with a mean of $980 and standard deviation of $40.

Question 1: What is the 50th percentile?

On PHSTAT, I used 980 for the mean 40 for the standard deviation and 50 for the cumulative percentage and I came up with $980

Question 2: What is the minimum value of the price of long term government bond (x) where 60% of the prices exceed that value?

I am unsure of how I should enter this into PHSTAT.

Any and all assistance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[jea252]

re-post. possible to provide assistance without PHSTAT?

My Professor teaches normal probability by using PHSTAT. This is a homework question that I am in need of assistance. I am not sure where to begin. Any assistance would be appreciated. Doesn't have to involve PHSTAT.

A financial analyst states that the price of X of a long term government bond one year later is normally distributed with a mean of $980 and standard deviation of $40.

Question 1: What is the 50th percentile?

On PHSTAT, I used 980 for the mean 40 for the standard deviation and 50 for the cumulative percentage and I came up with $980

Question 2: What is the minimum value of the price of long term government bond (x) where 60% of the prices exceed that value?

Any and all assistance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[royhaas]

In the normal distribution, the mean and the median are equal because of the symmetry of the distribution. In other cases, you need to standardize and refer to a table of the standard normal distribution. For example, if 60 percent of prices exceeds some value, then 40 percent of prices are less than that same value. Find the standard normal value corresponding to a probability of 0.4. Then multiply by the standard deviation and add in the mean.

You don't need fancy software for most problems involving the normal distribution.