Dr. Hernandez is a conservation biologist studying the impacts a derelict pharmaceutical company is having on a native fish popu
lation in a nearby lake. The lake has been contaminated with bovine growth hormone and Dr. Hernandez wants to see if the fish reaching adulthood in the contaminated lake are larger than the fish in a pristine lake that is nearby. Dr. Hernandez has the weights of 30 fish from the contaminated lake and of 30 fish from the pristine lake. Based on the experimental design of Dr. Hernandez's research and the kind of data collected, which statistical test should be used to determine whether the bovine growth hormone is increasing the growth of native fish?
A. Two-tailed two-sample t-test
B. One-tailed paired t-test
C. Two-tailed paired t-test
D. One-tailed two-sample t-test
E. One-Way ANOVA
F. Linear Regression with t-test for significance of slope
Since Dr. Hernandez takes 30 samples from a contaminated lake and 30 fish from a pristine lake, he should use a two-tailed t-test.
Paired t-tests describe tests used to compare the means of two samples when each observation in one sample can be paired with an observation in the other sample. Dr. Hernandez can certainly pair the samples and observe the differences, so the answer is C. Two-tailed paired t-test.
