Question

Spiders. These are creepy, crawly things that scuttle over you when you sleep. And sometimes, or so the urban legend goes, they crawl into your mouth; swallowed whole by you during sleep!?! If the urban legend is to be believed, the total amount of spiders swallowed per year, per person, is 8. That is a lot of spiders! (Maloney, 2017).

Scientists, however, assure us that this urban legend is completely untrue; that the myth flies in the face of both spider and human biology. Shear argued, “spiders regard us much like they’d regard a big rock. . . we’re so large that we’re really just part of the landscape” (cited in Sneed, 2014, para 4). If anything, spiders find sleeping humans terrifying. Why? A slumbering person breaths, has a beating heart, and perhaps snores – all of which creates vibrations that warn spiders of danger (Sneed, 2014). In short, spiders typically stay away from sleeping humans.

Still, you are not convinced. And it is bedtime soon. You decide to call 20 of your friends and ask them to report how many spiders they have swallowed in a year.

The data you collected is presented below:

Friend	# of Spiders Swallowed per Year
James	2
Chloe	1
Alex	4
Daniel	5
Rebecca	1
Oswin	2
Rory	3
Amy	0
Oliver	1
Espirtu	4
Cory Jr	6
Joshua	2
River	1
Rose	3
Martha	1
Donna	2
Sally	2
Wilfred	1
Ashildr	0
Winston	7

1. (5 pt) Conduct a t-test to see to see if there is a difference in the number of spiders swallowed per year by your friends and the rate of spiders swallowed – allegedly that is – per year by the general population. Use a two-tailed design with α= 0.05. Each step of the test is worth 1 point.

2. (2 pt) Write a sentence regarding the results of your hypothesis test as it might be reported in a scientific journal. Remember, at the end of the sentence report the t-value, df, and p-value in parentheses (as shown in class).

3. (2 pt) Explain how your hypothesis test would have been different if you were given this information: σ = 3. Would you have had the same conclusion? Show your calculations.

4. (2 pt) Explain how your t-test would have been different if you had been asked to test whether the number of spiders swallowed was less thanthe average of μ = 8 (i.e. one-tail, directional hypothesis, α= 0.05). Would you have had the same conclusion?

5. (4 pt) Comment on the importance of sample size (N) for making statistical conclusions in the current study. As part of your response, discuss the following: what role did sample size play in your calculations for 1) variance, 2) standard deviation, 3) final test statistic, and 4) cut-off. For each, discuss how increasing the sample size would affect these calculations? Refer to the formulas throughout your explanations.

Answer 1