Question

The two tires on a bicycle experience wear much like car tires do; repeated contact with the road or sidewalk will wear down the raised rubber, giving the tire less traction. A major tire manufacturer has developed a new bicycle tire design they hope will reduce wear. After running several rounds of testing in laboratory conditions, they want to test the tires in real-life biking conditions. They find 20 volunteers who bike on a daily basis. The volunteers are each given a new bike of the same model for the duration of the experiment. The volunteers are to bike as they normally would for a month, then return the bike to have the wear of the tires measured, determined by millimeters of tire depth remaining. The manufacturer wants to compare the new tire to the standard model tire, so they will use the standard model in the experiment as a control group.
The manufacturer determines a matched pairs design would be most appropriate to compare the wear of the new tire design to the standard design. Describe how to implement a matched pair design for this experiment.

Answer 1

Answer:

Each bike with both types of tire.

Half of the tires of each type will be in the front wheel and the other half in the rear wheel.

Step-by-step explanation:

To compare the wear of each type of tire in a matched-pair test, the individuals have to test each of the tires in the same conditions.

This will allow to compare the tires wear in equal conditions. If the tires are assigned randomly to the volunteers, there will be difference in the wear due to difference habits of the bikers.

The only way to implement a matched-pair test with bikes is to use one type of tire in the front wheel and the other type in the rear wheel. Half of the tires of each type will be in the front and half in the rear.

In this way, the distance traveled with each type of tire will be the same.