Question

Aspirin A bottle contains a label stating that it contains Spring Valley pills with 500 mg of vitamin C, and another bottle contains a label stating that it contains Bayer pills with 325 mg of aspirin. When testing claims about the mean contents of the pills, which would have more serious implications: rejection of the Spring Valley vitamin C claim or rejection of the Bayer aspirin claim? Is it wise to use the same significance level for hypothesis tests about the mean amount of vitamin C and the mean amount of aspirin? Rejection of the claim about______is more serious because the wrong______V dosage could cause more serious adverse reactions than a wrong______dosage. It would be wise to use a_______significance level for testing the claim about the aspirin.

Answer 1

Rejection of the claim about aspirin is more serious because the wrong aspirin dosage could cause more serious adverse reactions than a wrong vitamin C dosage. It would be wise to use a greater significance level for testing the claim about the aspirin.

Explanation:

The wrong dosage of aspirin will cause more damage than a wrong dosage of vitamin C. Then, if we perform an hypothesis test for each mean, the rejection of the claim about the aspirin content is more serious than the vitamin C content.

In the case of the aspirin, we want to minimize the Type II error (accepting a false null hypothesis). This can be achieved increasing the sample size or/and increasing the significance level. Then, a significative difference between the claimed content and the sample content will be easily detected.