In: Statistics and Probability
Scientists are interested in human recall and memory. Is it easier to memorize words that have "meaning"? To study this problem, two lists of 20 three-letter "words" were used. One list contained meaningful words (e.g., CAT, DOG), whereas the other list contained nonsense words (e.g., ATC, ODG). A ninth grade class of thirty students will be divided into two groups of students. One group was asked to memorize the list of meaningful words; the other group was asked to memorize the list of nonsense words. The number of words correctly recalled by each student was tabulated.
Number of meaningful words recalled: 12,15,12,12,10,3,7,11,9,14,9,10,9,5,13
Number of nonsense words recalled: 4,6,6,5,7,5,4,7,9,10,8,7,3,2
Is there convincing evidence to report that meaningful words are remembered better than nonsene words?
What statistic test would you use to prove that?
Assuming alpha = 0.05
t test will be used for independent means
Ho: μ1 ≤ μ2
Ha: μ1 > μ2
This corresponds to a right-tailed test, for which a t-test for two population means, with two independent samples, with unknown population standard deviations will be used.