The percent, X, of shrinkage on drying for a certain type of plastic clay has an average shrinkage percentage :, where parameter : is unknown. A random sample of 45 specimens from this clay showed an average shrinking percentage of 18.4 and a standard deviation of 2.2. est at 5% level of significance whether the true average shrinkage percentage : is greater than 17.5 and write your conclusion. Report the p-value.

The degrees of freedom are given by:

The critical value for this case is since the calculated value is higher than the critical we have enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis and we can conclude that the true mean is significantly higher than 18.4

We see that the p value is lower than the significance level so then we can reject the null hypothesis in favor of the alternative.

Step-by-step explanation:

Information given

represent the sample mean

represent the sample standard deviation

sample size  

represent the value to verify

represent the significance level

t would represent the statistic

represent the p value

We want to test if the true mean is higher than 17.5, the system of hypothesis would be:  

Null hypothesis:  

Alternative hypothesis:  

The statistic is given by:

 (1)  

And replacing we got:

The degrees of freedom are given by:

The critical value for this case is since the calculated value is higher than the critical we have enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis and we can conclude that the true mean is significantly higher than 18.4

The p value would be given by:

We see that the p value is lower than the significance level so then we can reject the null hypothesis in favor of the alternative.