You are interested in whether excess risk-adjusted return (alpha) is correlated with mutual fund expense ratios for US large-cap growth funds. The following table presents the sample.

A. Formulate null and alternative hypotheses consistent with the verbal description of the research goal.
B. Identify the test statistic for conducting a test of the hypotheses in Part A.
C. Justify your selection in Part B.
D. Determine whether or not to reject the null hypothesis at the 0.05 level of significance.

Mutual Fund 2. 3 4 9. Alpha (X) Expense Ratio (Y) -0.42 -0.13 -0.89 -0.23 -0.52 -0.60 -0.26 -1.01 -0.60 0.92 1.02 1.45 1.00 1.45 0.50 1.35 1.50 1.34