A recent study focused on the number of times men and women who live alone buy take-out dinner in a month. Assume that the distributions follow the normal probability distribution and the population standard deviations are equal. The information is summarized below.

Statistic Men Women

Sample mean 24.53 21.89

Sample standard 5.69 4.66

deviation

Sample size 35 39

At the 0.01 significance level, is there a difference in the mean number of times men and women order take-out dinners in a month?

a. State the decision rule for 0.01 significance level: H₀: _Men= _WomenH₁: _{Men Women}

b. Compute the value of the test statistic