Accounting Today identified top accounting firms in 10 geographic regions across the United States. All 10 regions reported growth in 2016. The Southeast and Gulf Coast regions reported growths of 12.03% and 9.47%, 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.

Source: Data extracted from Accounting Today, “Special Report: The 2017 Top 100 Firms and Regional Leaders,” bit.ly/2sNGVqH.

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. Determine the p-value in (a) and interpret its meaning.

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?