spectively. A characteristic description of the accounting firms in the Southeast and Gulf Coast regions included the number of partners in the firm. The file AccountingPartners3 contains the number of partners. (Data extracted from bit.ly/1BoMzsv) Assuming that the population variances from both offices are equal, at the 0.10 level of significance, is there evidence of a difference between Southeast region accounting firms and Gulf Coast accounting firms with respect to the mean number of partners? Referring to Table 10-1, the proper conclusion for this test is   Question 5 options:   1)  at the α = 0.10 level, there is sufficient evidence to indicate a difference in the mean time to clear problems in the two offices.   2)  at the α = 0.10 level, there is sufficient evidence to indicate that mean waiting time in Central Office I is smaller than that of Central Office II.   3)  at the α = 0.10 level, there is sufficient evidence to indicate that mean waiting time in Central Office I is higher than that of Central Office II.   4)  at the α = 0.10 level, there is not enough evidence to conclude that the mean time to clear problems in the two offices is different.

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 + ...