Let x be a random variable that represents red blood cell (RBC) count in millions of cells per cubic millimeter of whole blood. Then x has a distribution that is approximately normal. For the population of healthy female adults, the mean of the x distribution is about 4.8 (based on information from Diagnostic Tests with Nursing Implications, Springhouse Corporation). Suppose that a female patient has taken six laboratory blood tests over the past several months and that the RBC count data sent to the patient’s doctor are:
4.9 4.2 4.5 4.1 4.4 4.3
i. Use a calculator with sample mean and sample standard deviation keys to verify that  = 4.40 and s ≈ 0.28.
ii. Do the given data indicate that the population mean RBC count for this patient is lower than 4.8? Use α = 0.05.
Please provide the following information:
(a) What is the level of significance? State the null and alternate hypotheses.
(b) What sampling distribution will you use? Explain the rationale for your choice of sampling distribution. Compute the value of the sample test statistic.
(c) Find (or estimate) the P-value. Sketch the sampling distribution and show the area corresponding to the P-value.
(d) Based on your answers in parts (a)–(c), will you reject or fail to reject the null hypothesis? Are the data statistically significant at level α?
(e) Interpret your conclusion in the context of the application.
For degrees of freedom d.f. not given in the Student’s t table, use the closest d.f. that is smaller. In some situations, this choice of d.f. may increase the P-value by a small amount and therefore produce a slightly more “conservative” answer.