The Use of Carpeting in Hospitals, While Having Aesthetic Value

question 10

Multiple Choice

The use of carpeting in hospitals, while having aesthetic value, raises an obvious question: Are carpeted floors sanitary? An experiment comparing airborne bacteria levels in carpeted rooms with that in uncarpeted rooms was performed in an effort to answer this question. Specifically, for each of eight carpeted rooms and eight uncarpeted rooms in a hospital, the number of bacteria per cubic foot of air was measured. The data are given below. Assume that room sizes are equal, and that the 16 rooms in this experiment were assigned randomly to the carpet and no-carpet groups. The researcher is interested in testing H₀ : no difference in distribution of bacteria counts for carpeted and uncarpeted rooms, against the one-sided alternative H _a^: the carpeted group tends to have higher bacteria counts. If W, the Wilcoxon rank sum test statistic, is the sum of the ranks assigned to the carpeted group, then the P-value for the test is:

• A)0.046.
• B)0.248.
• C)0.496.
• D)0.752.

---

Definitions:

Production Possibilities Frontier

A graphical representation that shows the various combinations of output that an economy can produce given the available resources and technology.

Opportunity Cost

Yielding potential gains from different scenarios when one is favored.

Society

A group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same geographical or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations.

Production Possibilities Curve

A graphical representation showing the maximum quantity of two goods or services that can be produced within a given time period and with available resources.