Final answer:
To determine if children's educational software costs less, on average, than children's entertainment software, we can conduct a hypothesis test using the sample means and standard deviations.
Step-by-step explanation:
To decide whether children's educational software costs less, on average, than children's entertainment software, we can conduct a hypothesis test using the sample means and standard deviations. Let's denote the mean cost of educational software as μ1 and the mean cost of entertainment software as μ2. The null hypothesis, denoted as H0, is that the two means are equal, and the alternative hypothesis, denoted as H1, is that the mean cost of educational software is less than the mean cost of entertainment software.
We can use a two-sample t-test to compare the means. The test statistic can be calculated as:
t = (mean1 - mean2) / sqrt((s1^2 / n1) + (s2^2 / n2)),
where mean1 and mean2 are the sample means, s1 and s2 are the sample standard deviations, and n1 and n2 are the sample sizes.
We can then compare the test statistic to the critical value at a given significance level (e.g., α = 0.05) to make a decision. If the test statistic is less than the critical value, we reject the null hypothesis and conclude that children's educational software costs less, on average, than children's entertainment software.