Question

Atlantic Power, a large electric power utility, has built a modern nuclear power plant. This plant discharges waste water that is allowed to flow into the Atlantic Ocean. Environment Canada has ordered that the waste water temperature must be less than 15 degrees Celsius on average. The company would like to determine whether the population mean waste water temperature is indeed less than 15 degrees. In the real world, hundreds of temperature readings would be gathered each day; in this example, we will suppose we have 10 temperature readings in our sample:

12, 10, 8, 15, 17, 20, 10, 10, 9, 15

As the company has been operating for several years, they have a historical standard deviation of 2 degrees Celsius (i.e. this is the population standard deviation).

Calculate the test statistic (round to three decimal places, e.g. -2.0155 becomes -2.016).

Select the most appropriate conclusion

Answer 1