24 Does being told how a suspenseful store will end ruin the

24. Does being told how a suspenseful store will end ruin the experience of the reader? Movie and book critics are careful to avoid giving too much away in their reviews. But the impact of such “spoilers” has only recently been test scientificallt. Students were asked to read a variety of crime-mystery stores. Some were told the ending before starting to read whereas others were not told. At the end, readers were asked to rate their enjoyment of the stories on scale from 1 to 10, with 10 indicating greatest enjoyment. The mean enjoyment score was 7.3 in through of students told the endings beforehand, while average enjoyment score was 6.6 in the other group. A test of the statistical null hypothesis of no difference between the means of the two groups yielded P = 0.001.

            a. State the appropriate conclusion of the test.

            b. Do the data support the idea that knowing the ending reduces the mean

            enjoyment of the stories?

            c. The authors used a two-sided test. Is this appropriate? Explain.

Solution

a) Conclusion : Reject the null hypothesis.

b) Yes, the data support the idea that knowing the ending reduces the mean enjoyment of the stories

c) Yes , because test was done for equality condition.