A travel consultant claims that the standard deviations of hotel room rates for San Francisco, CA, and Sacramento, CA, are the same. A sample of 36 hotel room rates in San Francisco has a standard deviation of $75 and a sample of 31 hotel room rates in Sacramento has a standard deviation of $44. At α = 0.01, can you reject the travel consultant’s claim?

(a) Identify the claim and state H₀ and H_a,

(b) Find the critical value and identify the rejection region,

(c) Find the test statistic F,

(d) Decide whether to reject or fail to reject the null hypothesis,

(e) Interpret the decision in the context of the original claim. Assume the samples are random and independent, and the populations are normally distributed. If convenient, use technology.