Belden Inc. (NYSE: BWC) and Cable Design Technologies Corp. (NYSE: CDT) merged on Thursday, July 15, 2004. The new company, Belden CDT Inc., is one of the largest U.S.–based manufacturers of high-speed electronic cables and focuses on products for the specialty electronics and data networking markets, including connectivity. One of its products is a fiber-optic cable (TrayOptic). It is designed to have an overall diameter of 0.440 inch. A standard deviation greater than 0.05 inch would be unacceptable. A sample of size 20 was taken from the production line and yielded a standard deviation of 0.070.

a. Determine if the standard deviation does not meet specifications using a significance level of 0.01.

b. Describe a Type II error in the context of this exercise.