Question

A pharmaceutical company is testing a new cold medicine to determine if the drug has side affects. To test the drug, 8 patients are given the drug and 9 patients are given a placebo (sugar pill). The change in blood pressure after taking the pill was as follows:

Given drug:	3	4	5	1	-2	3	5	6
Given placebo:	1	-1	2	7	2	3	0	3	4

Test to determine if the drug raises patients’ blood pressure more than the placebo using a = 0.01 (please type)

Answer 1

Ans:

										mean	std. dev
Given drug:	3	4	5	1	-2	3	5	6		3.125	2.588
Given placebo:	1	-1	2	7	2	3	0	3	4	2.333	2.345

n1=8,n2=9

Assumption:equal population variances are not equal

Test statistic:

t=(3.125-2.333)/SQRT((2.588^2/8)+(2.345^2/9))

t=0.658

df=8-1=7

p-value=tdist(0.658,7,1)=0.2658

As,p-value>0.01,we fail to reject the null hypothesis.

There is not sufficient evidence to conclude that the drug raises patients’ blood pressure more than the placebo .