Question

An investment banking firm was considering two spreadsheet software for possible use in

its large data analysis operations. A sample of 20 typical analysis problems were carried

out using both software on the firm’s standard personal computer. The time in minutes

needed to load the data, program the spreadsheet calculations, carry out the analysis, and

print the results was recorded for each problem for each software. The data for software

A are stored in column 1 of the Excel data file named “Banking Spreadsheet.” The

corresponding data for software B are stored in column 2. Each of the rows corresponds

to one of the 20 problems. After constructing the 99% and 90% confidence intervals for

the mean of the differences in the minutes taken by the two software, a data analyst for

the company concluded that there is no substantive difference between the two software

in terms of the speed with which they process the data. In other words, he thought the

mean of the differences in the minutes taken by the two software is statistically

negligible. As a result he decided to recommend software B because he thought it is more

user-friendly than software A. Using the same data, please calculate and interpret the

confidence intervals upon which the analyst’s recommendation was based. Based on your

results would you agree with the analyst’s conclusion? Please justify your answer.

Spreadsheet A	Spreadsheet B
10	10
23	23
24	24
19	17
21	12
26	22
14	13
19	16
12	18
35	28
34	25
23	28
28	27
24	20
38	33
20	20
31	27
29	24
35	28
24	25

Answer 1