A study conducted by Reuters revealed that 14% of Fortune 1000 companies either terminated or froze their defined-benefit pension plans (source: Mark Miller, “The vanishing defined-benefit pension and its discontents,” www.reuters.com, May 6, 2014). As part of a study to evaluate how well its benefits package compares to other Fortune 1000 companies, a retail firm randomly samples 36 Fortune 1000 companies in odd-numbered years and asks them to complete a benefits questionnaire. One question asked is whether the company has changed its defined-benefits pension plan by either freezing it or terminating it during the survey year. The results of the survey are contained in the file Pension Survey.

a. Open the file and create a new variable that has a value equal to 1 if the firm has either terminated or frozen its defined-benefits pension plan and equal to 0 if the firm has not significantly altered its pension plan. Determine the sample proportion of companies that either terminated or froze their defined-benefits pension plan.

b. How likely is it that a sample proportion greater than or equal to the one found in the survey would occur if the true population of firms that have terminated or frozen their defined-benefits pension plan is as reported by Reuters?