Accounting Today identified the top accounting firms in 10 geographic regions across the United States. Even though all 10 regions reported growth in 2011, the Southeast and Gulf Coast regions reported the highest combined growths, with 18% and 19%, respectively. A characteristic description of the accounting firms in the Southeast and Gulf Coast regions included the number of partners in the firm. The file AccountingPartners2 contains the number of partners. (Data extracted from bit.ly/KKeokV.)
a. At the 0.05 level of significance, is there evidence of a difference in the variability in numbers of partners for Southeast region accounting firms and Gulf Coast accounting firms?
b. Interpret the p-value.
c. What assumption do you have to make about the two populations in order to justify the use of the F test?
d. Based on (a) and (b), which t test defined in Section 10.1 should you use to test whether there is a significant difference in the mean number of partners for Southeast region accounting firms and Gulf Coast accounting firms?