Suppose that we want to test whether the mean selling price of houses with is the same as the mean selling price of houses without a garage. We collect two samples and obtain the following information:

Question

Houses with garage
Sample size: 71
Mean selling price (in thousands of dollars): 238.2
Sample variance: 2,013.9

Houses with garage
Sample size: 34
Mean selling price (in thousands of dollars): 185.5
Sample variance: 784.3

Using the above information and an alpha of 0.05, carry out a hypothesis test (with unequal variances) to test the null hypothesis H0: µ1 = µ2.
To keep things simple, you may use the standard normal distribution (rather than the t-distribution).

Part (a)
Please open the “Assignment 2 Real Estate.xls” file in Excel and test the null hypothesis H0: µ1 = µ2. Consistent with Question 1, please use the “t-Test: Two-Sample Assuming Unequal Variance”.
You must submit your Excel file as part of the assignment.

Part (b)
What is your decision regarding the null hypothesis (“reject” or “do not reject”)? Explain on which cell in your Excel output you base your decision.
Note: Whenever you see a number such as 4.02583E-10 in Excel, that is scientific notation. Written in decimal form, that number is 0.000000000402583, i.e., it is very small.

Part (c)
Interpret your result from part (b) at a level that would be understandable to a high school graduate who has not taken a college-level statistics course.