According to Harrell Associates, a provider of research for airfare benchmarking, the lowest fares for airline tickets between the United States and Europe occur two months before a flight’s departure date. To test this claim, a random sample of seven flights to Europe was selected.

The airfare for each was recorded six months before the flight’s departure and again two months prior to departure.

The data are as follows and can also be found in the Excel file Harrell.xlsx.

Flight Fare Six Months Prior to Departure ($)

Fare Two Months Prior to Departure ($)

1 1,452 1,306 2 1,577 1,332 3 1,260 1,289 4 1,082 1,234 5 988 941 6 1,374 1,188 7 1,403 1,218 Perform a hypothesis test using a = 0.05 to determine if the airfares are less expensive two months prior to departure than they are six months prior to departure.

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