a. Identify three situations in which the measured output of a process has a small variation and three situations in which the variation is larger.

b. Identify three situations in which organizations would be interested in limiting the standard deviation of a process.

c. In response to customer surveys a candy company has recently increased the size of the chopped nuts used in its caramel nut bar. The marketing manager is concerned that the change will affect the variability in the cooking temperature and compromise the taste and consistency of the candy. The head cook took a random sample of 27 bathes and found the standard deviation if the temperature 1.15 Fahrenheit. Realizing this is only a point estimate, the marketing manager has requested a 98% confidence interval estimate for the population variance in the cooking temperature.

d. The 2013 graduating class from St. Francis University in Pennsylvania had the highest average student debt of all U.S. college graduates: $50,275. Second on the list was The Citadel in South Carolina, at $48,862. (Source: Susannah Snider, "10 Colleges that leave graduates with the most student loan debt," www.usnews.com, Feb. 17, 2015.) Suppose random samples of 75 St. Francis students and 205 Citadel students showed student loan standard deviations of $2,050 and $2,084, respectively. Using an alpha level of 0.10, test to determine whether the standard deviations for student loans at these two universities are equal.