Most water treatment facilities monitor the quality of their drinking water on an hourly basis. One variable measured is pH, which measures the degree of alkalinity or acidity in the water. A pH below 7.0 is acidic, one above 7.0 is alkaline, and a pH of 7.0 is neutral. One water-treatment plant has a target pH of 8.5. (Most try to maintain a slightly alkaline level) The mean and standard deviation of 1 hour’s test results based on 49 water samples at this plant are:   = 8.42; s = 0.16 Does this sample provide sufficient evidence that the mean pH level in the water differs from 8.5?

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 + ...