Reducing the size of a company's workforce in order to reduce costs is referred to as corporate downsizing or reductions in force (RIF) by the business community and media (Business Week, Feb. 24, 1997). Following RIFs, companies are often sued by former employees who allege that the RIFs were discriminatory with regard to age. Fedcral law protects employees over 40 years of age against such discrimination. Suppose one large company's employees have a median age of 37. Its RIF plan is to fire 15 employees with ages listed in the table below.

a. Calculate the median age of the employees who are being terminated.

b. What are the appropriate null and alternative hypotheses to test whether the population from which the terminated employees were selected has a median age that exceeds the entire company's median age?

c. The test of part b was conducted using MINITAB.

Find the significance level of the test on the MINITAB printout shown above and interpret its value.

d. Assuming that courts generally require statistical evidence at the .10 level of significance beforc ruling that age discrimination laws were violated, what do you advise the company about its planned RIF?

Explain.