Suppose that the average waiting time for a patient at a doctor's office is just over 29 minutes, and it is considered too long. The office manager would like to reduce patient waiting times to an average of 15 minutes. To address the issue of long patient waiting times, the office manager decides to introduce a wait-tracking system to notify patients of expected wait times using an app. Patients can adjust their arrival times based on this information and spend less time in the waiting room. Will introducing a wait-tracking system shorten wait times for patients? To answer this question, waiting times were recorded for a sample of patients before a wait-tracking system was introduced, and then for another sample of patients after a wait-tracking system was put in place.

Consider the side-by-side boxplot shown below in Figure 1. What does it tell you about the distributions of patient waiting times with and without a wait-tracking system? Comment briefly on the shape and spread of the two distributions.

Patient waiting times 70 60 50 40 Wait time (minutes) . 30 X 20 I X 10 0 Without Wait-Tracking With Wait-Tracking Figure 1. Side-by-side boxplots showing the distribution of patient waiting times with and without a wait-tracking system in place