Question

A story spoiler gives away the ending early. Does having a story spoiled in this way diminish suspense and hurt enjoyment? A study1 investigated this question. Give the test statistic and the p-value.For twelve different short stories, the study’s authors created a second version in which a spoiler paragraph at the beginning discussed the story and revealed the outcome. Each version of the twelve stories was read by at least 30 people and rated on a 1 to 10 scale to create an overall rating for the story, with higher ratings indicating greater enjoyment of the story. The ratings are given in Table 1 and stored in StorySpoilers. Stories 1 to 4 were ironic twist stories, stories 5 to 8 were mysteries, and stories 9 to 12 were literary stories. Test to see if there is a difference in mean overall enjoyment rating based on whether or not there is a spoiler.

Answer 1

To test if a story spoiler diminishes suspense and hurts enjoyment, a t-test can be used to compare the mean ratings of stories with and without a spoiler.

Step-by-step explanation:

To test if there is a difference in mean overall enjoyment rating based on whether or not there is a spoiler, a t-test can be used. The test statistic for a t-test is the t-value, and the p-value indicates the statistical significance of the results.

In this case, since we are comparing two groups (spoiler vs. no spoiler), we can perform an independent samples t-test. The t-value can be calculated by subtracting the mean rating of the spoiler group from the mean rating of the no spoiler group and dividing it by the standard error of the difference in means.

The p-value can be determined using the t-distribution table or by using statistical software.