In: Statistics and Probability
Air Force Training Program
An Air Force introductory course in electronics uses a personalized
system of instruction whereby each student views a videotaped
lecture and then is given a programmed instruction text. The
students work independently with the text until they have completed
the training and passed a test. Of concern is the varying pace at
which the students complete this portion of their training program.
Some students are able to cover the programmed instruction text
relatively quickly, whereas other students work much longer with
the text and require additional time to complete the course. The
fast students wait until the slow students complete the
introductory course before the entire group proceeds together with
other aspects of their training.
A proposed alternative system involves use of computer-assisted
instruction. In this method, all students view the same videotaped
lecture and then each is assigned to a computer terminal for
further instruction. The computer guides the student, working
independently, through the self-training portion of the
course.
To compare the proposed and current methods of instruction, an
entering class of 122 students was assigned randomly to one of the
two methods. One group of 61 students used the current
programmed-text method and the other group of 61 students used the
proposed computer-assisted method. The time in hours was recorded
for each student in the study. The following data are
provided.
Course Completion Times (hours) for Current Training Method
76 76 77 74 76 74 74 77 72 78 73
78 75 80 79 72 69 79 72 70 70 81
76 78 72 82 72 73 71 70 77 78 73
79 82 65 77 79 73 76 81 69 75 75
77 79 76 78 76 76 73 77 84 74 74
69 79 66 70 74 72
Course Completion Times (hours) for Proposed Computer-Assisted
Method
74 75 77 78 74 80 73 73 78 76 76
74 77 69 76 75 72 75 72 76 72 77
73 77 69 77 75 76 74 77 75 78 72
77 78 78 76 75 76 76 75 76 80 77
76 75 73 77 77 77 79 75 75 72 82
76 76 74 72 78 71
Managerial Report
1. Use appropriate descriptive statistics to summarize the training
data for each method. What similarities or differences do you
observe from the sample data?
2. Use the tests of hypothesis procedure to comment on any
difference between the population means for the two methods.
Discuss your findings.
3. Compute the standard deviation and variance for each training
method. Conduct a hypothesis test about the equality of population
variances for the two training methods. Discuss your
findings.
4. What conclusion can you reach about any difference between the
two methods?
5. Can you suggest other data or testing that might be desirable
before making a final decision on the training program to be used
in the future?
Please provide a detail solution. For Excel functions please provide the formula used to determine the values.