The freshman 15 refers to the urban legend that students gai

The freshman 15 refers to the urban legend that students gain an average of 15 pounds during their freshman year of college. The weights of 100 freshmen at a certain University were observed in August and then re-examined in May. The claim that the mean difference is equal to 15 pounds is tested at a 0.05 significance level. The result is \"fail to reject the null hypothesis\".

What do the results suggest?

What factors could have affected the results?

How can these results be used to make changes on campus?

Solution

Null Hyp: There is no gain in weight of students during freshman year

Alt Hyp: The students gain average 15 pounds weight during freshman year

The result is \"fail to reject the null hypothesis\"

The result suggests that at a 95% confidence level we do not have enough evidence to conclude that the mean difference is equal to 15 pounds or students gain an average of 15 pounds during their freshman year of college.

Factors that could have affected the results are:

1) Alpha (Significance Level) - A higher significance level (alpha > 0.05) can lead to a different result

2) Sample Size - Sample size of 100 has led to a higher t value and hence a higher p value

The results can show that the Urban legend does not hold true. The changes can be made accordingly by either changing the Freshman 15 to freshman XX where XX will be the actual weight gained.