One of the advances that helped to diminish carpal tunnel syndrome is ergonomic keyboards. The ergonomic keyboards may also increase typing speed.

Ten administrative assistants were chosen to type on both standard and ergonomic keyboards. The resulting word-per-minute typing speeds follow:

Ergonomic: 69 80 60 71 73 64 63 70 63 74 Standard: 70 68 54 56 58 64 62 51 64 53

a. Were the two samples obtained independently?

Support your assertion.

b. Conduct a hypothesis test to determine if the ergonomic keyboards increase the average words per minute attained while typing. Use a p-value approach with a significance level of 0.01. Assume equal population variances.