Do your bananas get over-ripe too fast? It has been said that if you wrap the stem of a banana in plastic, it will last longer. A student experiment seeks to explore whether this is true. They bought 12 bananas, 6 organic and 6 nonorganic, that all appeared to have the same level of ripeness. They plan to wrap 6 of the 12 banana stems in plastic and leave 6 unwrapped. They will then leave all 12 bananas on a kitchen counter and keep track of how long it takes until about 50% of the peel turns brown. 

a. Describe the random assignment process to the two conditions, wrapped and unwrapped, if no type of blocking is used. 

b. Describe the random assignment process to the two conditions, wrapped and unwrapped, if the students block on the type of banana, organic and nonorganic. 

c. Because of a treatment that nonorganic bananas receive during the production process, they tend to ripen at a different rate than organic bananas. Because of this difference, explain why it is important to use blocking in this experiment—especially with the small sample size.