Question

4.166  

Print vs E-booksSuppose you want to find out if reading speed is any difference between a print book and an e-book.

(a) Clearly describe how you might set up an experiment to test this. Give details.

(b) Why is a hypothesis test valuable here? What additional information does a hypothesis test give us beyond the descriptive statistics we discuss in Chapter 2?

(c) Why is a confidence interval valuable here? What additional information does a confidence interval give us beyond the descriptive statistics of Chapter 2 and the results of a hypothesis test described in part (b)?

(d) A similar study53 has been conducted, and reports that “the difference between Kindle and the book was significant at the p < .01 level, and the difference between the iPad and the book was marginally significant at p = .06.” The report also stated that “the iPad measured at 6.2% slower reading speed than the printed book, whereas the Kindle measured at 10.7% slower than print. However, the difference between the two devices [iPad and Kindle] was not statistically significant because of the data's fairly high variability.” Can you tell from the first quotation which method of reading (print or e-book) was faster in the sample or do you need the second quotation for that? Explain the results in your own words.

Answer 1