Edexcel S4 2002 June — Question 5

Exam BoardEdexcel
ModuleS4 (Statistics 4)
Year2002
SessionJune
TopicChi-squared distribution

5. The times, \(x\) seconds, taken by the competitors in the 100 m freestyle events at a school swimming gala are recorded. The following statistics are obtained from the data.
No. of competitorsSample Mean \(\bar { x }\)\(\sum x ^ { 2 }\)
Girls883.1055746
Boys788.9056130
Following the gala a proud parent claims that girls are faster swimmers than boys. Assuming that the times taken by the competitors are two independent random samples from normal distributions,
  1. test, at the \(10 \%\) level of significance, whether or not the variances of the two distributions are the same. State your hypotheses clearly.
  2. Stating your hypotheses clearly, test the parent's claim. Use a \(5 \%\) level of significance.