Company A claims that the variance of the lives of its appliances is less than the variance of the lives of Company B’s appliances. A sample of the lives of 20 of Company A’s appliances has a variance of 1.8. A sample of the lives of 25 of Company B’s appliances has a variance of 3.9. At α = 0.05, can you support Company A’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.