Recently many companies have been experimenting with telecommuting, allowing employees to work at home on their computers. Among other things, telecommuting is supposed to reduce the number of sick days taken. Suppose that at one firm, it is known that over the past few years employees have taken a mean of 5.4 sick days. This year, the firm introduces telecommuting. Management chooses a simple random sample of 80 employees to follow in detail, and, at the end of the year, these employees average 4.5 sick days with a standard deviation of 2.7 days. Let μ represent the mean number of sick days for all employees of the firm. a) Find the P-value for testing H0: μ ≥ 5.4 versus H1: μ < 5.4. b) Do you believe it is plausible that the mean number of sick days is at least 5.4, or are you convinced that it is less than 5.4? Explain your reasoning.

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 + ...