Question

Anthony is studying how quickly children tire based on the amount of sugar they ingest. He splits a group of 20 children into 2 groups. One group is given sugar and the other is not. Anthony asks the children to start playing at a playground at the same time, and to stop when they tire, measuring the time each child stops playing. He finds that the children who did not ingest sugar played 2 minutes longer than those who did ingest sugar. Anthony rerandomizes the data, calculates the difference between the means, and creates the dot plot shown below. Based on the data, can Anthony conclude the difference is significant?

Answer 1

Anthony can conclude that the difference is significant, because a two minutes difference is not likely to happen by chance. In analyzing data, a statistically significant result is one which is not attributed to chance, that is, there is no way the event could have occur by chance.