Practical Application Scenario 1

You are the manager of the Gander Mountain store in Frogtown, Illinois. Recently, a customer mentioned they believed your prices for ammunition were lower than the prices of Gander Mountain’s primary competitor in hunting equipment, Cabela’s. You would like to include that statement in a forthcoming print advertisement, so you need statistical evidence to support this assertion.

Identify the null and alternative hypotheses needed to test the contention. Then identify the most appropriate sample selection technique to gather data for testing the hypotheses. What statistical test should you use to accept or reject this hypothesis using the data you will collect?

Practical Application Scenario 2

Your love of golf has brought you back to the range as the new product manager for UniDun’s Straight Flight (SF) line of golf balls. The company’s research and development group has been experimenting with dimple patterns that promote straight flight and feel they have achieved some degree of success; however, you are worried about the effect that the new pattern might have on driving distance.

The Golf Ball Distances document contains test results that compare the driving distances for the two different kinds of balls: 40 balls of the new SF type and 40 of the current UniDun type. Your job is to determine if the current UniDun balls can be driven further than the new SF balls. To resolve this question, you need appropriate answers to the following four questions. Remember to use your Business Statistics in Practice textbook, the supplementary instruction session archives, and the optional course resources to help you answer each of the following questions:

1. Identify the appropriate null and alternative hypotheses for this test. Express each in writing and in the form of an equation.
2. Identify the appropriate statistical test to accept or reject the null hypothesis.
3. Calculate the statistical parameters, the mean, variance, and standard deviation. Then calculate the statistical test and the p-value.
4. In a three- to five-paragraph synopsis, explain your results to the vice president of marketing, including the terms of the scenario variables.

Hint: You will need to use Excel’s Analysis ToolPak, or the Mac equivalent, StatPlus:mac, to calculate the statistical parameters, the mean, variance, and standard deviation, and to calculate the statistical test that you have chosen and its p-value. SAS Enterprise Guide users do not need to first calculate the statistical parameters.

Practical Application Scenario 3

As the food court manager at the Mall of Elbonia, you must determine how much time customers spend at the mall during different times of the week (for example: midweek day; midweek evening; weekend day; weekend evening). Last week, the mall survey staff randomly surveyed mall visitors as they left the mall. One key question asked how much time the customer had spent in the mall on that day.

The findings from this study are provided in the document titled Mall Time Results, provided in Resources. Columns A through D show the time spent by the customers interviewed, according to the part of the week and time of day when the interviews occurred. Is there any statistically significant difference (at alpha = .05) in the average amount of time people spend in the mall based on the part of the week and time of day? To determine the answer to this question, you need appropriate answers to all of the following four questions. Remember to use your Business Statistics in Practice textbook, the supplementary instruction session archives, and the optional course resources to help you answer each question.

• Identify the null and alternative hypotheses you should form for this test. Express each in writing and also in equation form.
• Identify the appropriate statistical test to accept or reject the null hypothesis.
• Calculate the appropriate statistical test values to accept or reject your null and alternative hypotheses.
• What should you tell the Mall of Elbonia’s food court stores managers in terms of the mall’s high-traffic times and customer tendencies?