A philosophy professor wants to find out whether the mean age of the men in his large lecture class is equal to the mean age of the women in his classes. He randomly selects 50 men and 50 women. What test should the professor perform to compare the average ages?
a. One-Sample (Mean) T-Test
b. Two-Sample (Mean) T- Test
c. Matched Pairs T-Test
d. One-Proportion Z-Test
e. Two-Proportion Z-Test
My Answer
My answer was B, a two-sample t-test since we are comparing two different groups and its a comparison.
Would Appreciate feedback
Wording is a bit wobbly: comparing (a) "men in his large lecture class" with "women in his classes." Why not women in his large lecture class?
Subject to the usual assumptions of random sampling from normal populations of interest, for which standard deviations are not known, a two-sample t test seems right.
But there's no reason to believe ages of relevant men and women are equally variable, so it should be a Welch 2-sample t test, which does not assume equal variances.
As with many multiple-choice questions, I guess it comes down to picking the least bad answer from an imprecisely-worded list.
Note: I would like to be able to 'down-vote' the author of the original question.