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CHAPTER 10 PROJECT
Pg. 474 #16
Our problem, number 16 on page 474, involved the rate of hay fever (per 1,000
population) for communities in western Kansas. Our data measure two groups, one measured the
rate of hay fever for people under 25 and the other measured the rate of hay fever for people over
50. The first set of data, for people under 25, had a total number of 16 communities sampled. The
average number of people that obtained hay fever in the first community sample was 109.50 with
a sample standard deviation of 15.41. The second set of data, measuring people over 50, had a
total sample size of 14. The average number of people that obtained the fever in the second
sample was 99.36 with a sample standard deviation of 11.57. Our null hypothesis is that there is
no difference between these two data sets, H0: 1=2. Our alternate hypothesis is that the age
group over 50 has a lower rate of hay fever, H1: 1>2. In order to determine if we can reject this
hypothesis, we will be using a 0.05 level of significance.
For this problem, we will be calculating a t-value rather than a z-value because we are
working with sample data and do not know the population standard deviation. In order to
calculate our t-value, we used the equation t= (1-2) / (s12/n1 + s22/n2); this gave us a t-value
of 2.053. Once we had our t-value we used the Students t-distribution table to find our p-value.
Our degrees of freedom was 13 because it was the lowest of both n-1 equations. In addition,
when using the t-table we were looking at a one tailed area because we are trying to see if 1>2.
We traced from row 13 (degrees of freedom) over to the values of 1.771 and 2.160 because our
t-value falls between those two numbers. We then traced up to the one tail area and found that
our p-value would be between 0.025 and 0.050.
Given that 0.025<p<0.050, we reject the null hypothesis that there is no difference in the
data sets. This means, using a 0.05 level of significance, we can say that the rate of hay fever for
people under 25 is greater than the rate of hay fever for people over 50.
In order to find a 95% confidence interval for the difference of two means, we have to
find the margin of error. The equation for E is E= tc (s12/n1 + s22/n2). Before we calculate our
margin for error, we need to find the confidence interval, critical value or tc. We found this value
to be 2.160, this was found using table 4 at the intersection of our degrees of freedom, 13, and
the column with 0.950 confidence. We calculated our E and found that our margin for error was
10.67. Now that we had our error level we could find our 95% confidence level by using the
equation (1-2)-E < 1-2 < (1-2)+E. After using this equation we can say with 95%
confidence that -0.53< 1-2 < 20.81. This means that based on our data, we are 95% confident
that the difference between the first population mean and the second population mean is between
that interval. In most cases, when 1>2 there are only positive values in the confidence intervals.
But because we had a higher level of significance as well as a higher confidence interval, we
have one negative value and one positive value. This just says that there is a 5% chance that our
value could be negative, even if it is only slightly negative. Had we used a .01 level of
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significance or calculated a 90% confidence interval, both of our values would have been
positive.