8.62 Consumer Outlook According to the 14th Annual RBC Homeownership Survey conducted by Ipsos-Reid in 2007, most Canadians continued to think purchasing a home was a good investment. 17 Addition- ally, there was less concern about interest and/or mort- gage rate hikes than at the same time the year before: 51% were concerned about interest rate increases in 2007 versus 56% in 2006; 43% thought mortgage rates would go up in 2007 versus 70% in 2006. Suppose that these results are based on 1000 randomly selected adult Canadians.

a. Construct a 99% confidence interval for the differ- ence in the proportion of Canadians regarding the interest increase in 2006 versus 2007.

b. Does the data indicate that the true proportion of 2007 is higher than in 2006? Explain.