Better barley Does drying barley seeds in a kiln increase the yield of barley? A famous experiment by William S. Gosset (who discovered the t distributions) investigated this question. Eleven pairs of adjacent plots were marked out in a large field. For each pair, regular barley seeds were planted in one plot and kiln-dried seeds were planted in the other. A coin flip was used to determine which plot in each pair got the regular barley seed and which got the kiln-dried seed. The following table displays the data on barley yield (pound per acre) for each plot.

Do these data provide convincing evidence at the α=0.05level that drying barley seeds in a kiln increases the yield of barley, on average?

Short Answer

Expert verified

There is no convincing evidence that drying barley seeds in a kiln increase the yield of barley, on average.

Step by step solution

01

Given information

We were told that on a big field, eleven pairs of neighboring plots were marked out, with ordinary barley seeds planted in one plot and kiln-dried seeds placed in the other.

We need to find out that do these data provide convincing evidence at the α=0.05level that drying barley seeds in a kiln increases the yield of barley, on average

02

Explanation

Given:

n=Samplesize=11α=Significancelevel=0.05

Let us determine the difference between regular barley seeds and kiln-dried seeds

Now we will determine the mean of values of the difference:

x¯=-106+20-101+33-72-62+36-38+70-127-2411=-37111-33.7273

Now we will determine the standard deviation

s=n=110Difference-x¯2n-1

s=106+33.72732+20+72732+-101+33.72732+33+33.72732+-72+33.72732+-62+33.72732+36+33.72732+-38+33.72732+70+33.72732+-127+3.72732+-24+33.7273211-166.1711

Now we will carry out a hypothesis test for the population mean difference.

Here we have:

Populationmeandifference=μdH0=NullhyphothesisHa=AlternativehyphothesisH0:μd=0Ha:μd0Nowwewilldeterminethevalueofteststatistics:t=x¯-μdsn

t=-33.7273-066.171111-1.690

The P-value is the probability of obtaining the value of test statistics.

Degree of freedom =11-1=10

The test is a two-tailed test so we double the boundaries of the P-value.

0.05<P<0.10nowatt=-1.690andDegreeoffreedom=10,Pvalue=0.06095

We have to reject the null hypothesis if the probability value is less than the hypothesis value.

P>0.05failtorejectH0

This demonstrates that there is no convincing evidence that kiln-drying barley seeds increases barley yields on average.

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