A consumer analytics agency in Canada is interested in analyzing the pricing strategies of two prominent grocery chains - MapleGrocers and TrueNorth Markets. To conduct this comparison, the agency implements a consistent shopping strategy, using a predetermined weekly grocery list to make equivalent purchases at 10 randomly selected stores from each chain. These purchases are all carried out within the same week. The data collected from these shopping trips, indicating the weekly expenses at both chains, is tabulated below. It is assumed that the weekly expenditures at each chain follow a normal distribution and population variances are equal.

Store	MapleGrocers Cost	TrueNorth Markets Cost
1	$119.25	$111.99
2	$121.32	$114.88
3	$122.34	$115.11
4	$120.14	$117.02
5	$122.19	$116.89
6	$123.71	$116.62
7	$121.72	$115.38
8	$122.42	$114.40
9	$123.63	$113.91
10	$122.44	$111.87

a) Are the samples taken from MapleGrocers and TrueNorth Markets independent? Justify your answer.

b) Conduct a parametric hypothesis test to determine if there is a statistically significant difference between the mean weekly expenses at MapleGrocers and TrueNorth Markets. Use the critical value and p-value approach at a 5% significance level. Include all the steps of hypothesis testing (hypotheses, decision rule, critical value/p-value, and conclusion with justification). Show your manual calculations and provide a StatCrunch output confirming your results. (Manual calculations and StatCrunch)

c) Calculate and interpret an appropriate 95% confidence interval for the difference between the mean weekly expenses at MapleGrocers and TrueNorth Markets. Show manual calculations and StatCrunch output for verification. (Manual calculations and StatCrunch)

d) Do the conclusions in part b) and c) seem consistent? Explain why or why not.

e) Formulate the null and alternative hypotheses required to test whether the mean weekly expense of the shopping plan at MapleGrocers surpasses that of TrueNorth Markets by over $5. Use the critical value approach at a 5% significance level. Include all the steps of hypothesis testing (hypotheses, decision rule, critical value, and conclusion with justification). Show your manual calculations and provide a StatCrunch output confirming your results. (Manual calculations and StatCrunch)

f) You suspect the assumption of normality, so produce a boxplot using STATCRUNCH/EXCEL to compare the expenses at both chains and include your output in the assignment. Comment on your findings about normality assumption. (StatCrunch/Excel)