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Expert: - 5/5/2009


Question
Hi, thanks for your time and effort.  This is question is for statistics.  Here it is:

The following data represents the ages of drivers involved in automobile crashes. Do these data provide sufficient evidence to conclude that there is a difference in the average age of male and female drivers involved in crashes?

M: 70, 60, 77, 39, 36, 28, 19, 40, 23, 23, 63, 31, 26, 55, 24, 76
F: 62, 46, 43, 28, 21, 22, 27, 42, 21, 46, 33, 29, 44, 29, 56, 70

basically, all im worried about is which parametric test i should use for the 6 step hypothesis test. I am fairly certain that I would use the 'testing a claim about a mean, with the standard deviation of the population unknown'. I think this because im focusing on that key word 'difference'. Am I correct?

And the last one: It shows a table with 4 columns of data

Data represents time intervals (in minutes) between eruptions of Old Faithful in the given years. Has the time between eruptions changed over the years?

So wouldn't I still use the 'testing a claim about a mean, with the standard deviation of the population unknown', since we are looking at if something has changed over the years?

Answer
I would divide the data into intervals.

I'm not sure how many years there are or how many eruptions there were, but the number of intervals should be roughly the squareroot of how many measurements there were.

Count the number in each interval and then from these numbers a mean and standard deviation can be recorded.  On the data, linear regression can be done to plot the best fit straight line.  

There is also statistics that can be done on how well the line fits the data.  Take (predicted data value from the line) - (observed number in that time zone) for each one.  Square these all and add them up, then divide by n-1 where n is the number of periods the data was divided into.

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