Question

An appliance manufacturer wants to contract with a repair shop to handle authorized repairs in Indianapolis. The company has set an acceptable range of repair time of 50 minutes to 90 minutes. Two firms have submitted bids for the work. In test trials, one firm had a mean repair time of 74 minutes with a standard deviation of 4.0 minutes and the other firm had a mean repair time of 72 minutes with a standard deviation of 5.1 minutes. Which firm would you choose? Why?

Answer 1

Although one would repair at the most time of 76 minutes, the other is at most 77.1 minutes. I would pick the second one because they may take longer by 1.1 minutes at most, they also included seconds, which seems more like an honest bid time.