In the past, the average gasoline price of one of the major oil companies has been $3.20 per gallon. Because of cost reduction measures, it is believed that there has been a significant reduction in the average price. In order to test this belief, we randomly selected a sample of 36 of the company's gas stations and determined that the average price for the stations in the sample was $3.14. Assume that the standard deviation of the population (σ) is $0.12. H0 =There is no reduction in the average price of gasoline. Ha =There is a significant reduction in the average price of gasoline.   Null Hypothesis, H0: μ ≥ 3.20 Alternate Hypothesis, Ha: μ < 3.20 a. Compute the test statistic and critical value. b. What is the p-value associated with a 1% level of significance of the above sample results? c. Briefly discuss your conclusion?

Definition Definition Measure of central tendency that is the average of a given data set. The mean value is evaluated as the quotient of the sum of all observations by the sample size. The mean, in contrast to a median, is affected by extreme values. Very large or very small values can distract the mean from the center of the data. Arithmetic mean: The most common type of mean is the arithmetic mean. It is evaluated using the formula: μ = 1 N ∑ i = 1 N x i Other types of means are the geometric mean, logarithmic mean, and harmonic mean. Geometric mean: The nth root of the product of n observations from a data set is defined as the geometric mean of the set: G = x 1 x 2 ... x n n Logarithmic mean: The difference of the natural logarithms of the two numbers, divided by the difference between the numbers is the logarithmic mean of the two numbers. The logarithmic mean is used particularly in heat transfer and mass transfer. ln x 2 − ln x 1 x 2 − x 1 Harmonic mean: The inverse of the arithmetic mean of the inverses of all the numbers in a data set is the harmonic mean of the data. 1 1 x 1 + 1 x 2 + ...