The international Coffee Association has reported the mean daily coffee consumption for U.S. residents as 1.65 cups. Assume that a sample of 38 people from a North Carolina city consumed a mean of 1.84 cups of coffee per day, with a standard deviation of 0.85 cups. In a two-tail test at the 0.05 level, could the residents of this city be said to be significantly different from their counterparts across the nation?

1 answer

Z = (mean1 - mean2)/standard error (SE) of difference between means

SEdiff = √(SEmean1^2 + SEmean2^2)

SEm = SD/√(n-1)

Since only one SD is provided, you can use just that to determine SEdiff.

Find table in the back of your statistics text labeled something like "areas under normal distribution" to find the proportion related to the Z score. Is Z > 1.96?