Final answer:
A modified diet is tailored to meet an individual's nutritional needs. In the scenario given, a powder diet and a liquid diet are compared to see if the latter results in greater weight loss, which requires further statistical analysis.
Step-by-step explanation:
A modified diet is changed to meet the nutritional and medical needs of a client. When conducting studies or tests to compare different dietary plans, such as powder or liquid diets, it is important to consider the mean weight loss results as well as the standard deviation to understand the effectiveness and variability of the weight loss outcomes. In the given scenario, a powder diet is tested on 49 people with a mean weight loss of 42 pounds and a standard deviation of 12 pounds, while a liquid diet is tested on 36 people with a mean weight loss of 45 pounds and a standard deviation of 14 pounds. To determine if the liquid diet yields a higher mean weight loss statistically, it would require an analysis like a t-test to compare the two means, taking into consideration the sample sizes and standard deviations.