A chemical products manufacturer must identify a new supplier for a raw material that is an essential component of a particular product. The previous supplier was able to deliver material with a mean molecular weight of 3500. The new supplier must show equivalence to this value of molecular weight. If the new supplier can deliver material that has a molecular weigh that is within 50 units of this value, it will be considered equivalent. A random sample of 10 lots of product is available, and the sample mean and standard deviation of molecular weight are 3550 and 25, respectively.

(a) State the appropriate hypotheses that must be tested to demonstrate equivalence.

(b) What are your conclusions using α = 0.05?