| Exam Board | Edexcel |
| Module | S3 (Statistics 3) |
| Year | 2003 |
| Session | June |
| Topic | Hypothesis test of a normal distribution |
5. A scientist monitored the levels of river pollution near a factory. Before the factory was closed down she took 100 random samples of water from different parts of the river and found an average weight of pollutants of \(10 \mathrm { mg } \mathrm { l } ^ { - 1 }\) with a standard deviation of \(2.64 \mathrm { mg } \mathrm { l } ^ { - 1 }\). After the factory was closed down the scientist collected a further 120 random samples and found that they contained \(8 \mathrm { mg } \mathrm { l } ^ { - 1 }\) of pollutants on average with a standard deviation of \(1.94 \mathrm { mg } \mathrm { l } ^ { - 1 }\).
Test, at the \(5 \%\) level of significance, whether or not the mean river pollution fell after the factory closed down.