1. A design engineer at Sperling Manufacturing (a supplier of high-quality ball bearings) claims a new machining process can result in a higher daily output rate. Accordingly, the production group is conducting an experiment to determine if this claim can be substantiated. The mean and the standard deviation of bearings in a sample of 8 days' output using the new process equal 2613.63 and 90.78, respectively. A similar sample of 10 days' output using the old process yields the mean and the standard deviation of 2485.10 and 148.22, respectively. Assume normally distributed populations and equal population variances for each process. Assuming the significance level for the test is to be 0.05 (i.e. 5%) and considering new process as population 1 and old process as population 2, what statistical decision should be made?

   	a.	Accept the null hypothesis.
   	b.	Reject the alternative hypothesis.
   	c.	Reject the null hupothesis.
   	d.	Do not reject the null hypothesis.