Do undergraduate business students who major in finance earn, on average, higher annual starting salaries than their peers who major in marketing? Address this question through a statistical hypothesis test. The file P09_23.xlsx contains the starting salaries of 50 randomly selected finance majors and 50 randomly selected marketing majors.
a. Is it appropriate to perform a paired-comparison t test with these data? Explain why or why not.
b. Perform an appropriate hypothesis test with a 5% significance level. Summarize your findings.
c. How large would the difference between the mean starting salaries of finance and marketing majors have to be before you could conclude that finance majors earn more on average? Employ a 5% significance level in answering this question.