Gender and Direction. In the paper “The Relation of Sex and Sense of Direction to Spatial Orientation in an Unfamiliar Environment” (Journal of Environmental Psychology, Vol. 20, pp. 17–28), J. Sholl et al. published the results of examining the sense of direction of 30 male and 30 female students. After being taken to an unfamiliar wooded park, the students were given some spatial orientation tests, including pointing to south, which tested their absolute frame of reference. The students pointed by moving a pointer attached to a 360◦ protractor. The absolute pointing errors, in degrees, are provided on the WeissStats site.

a. Use the Mann–Whitney test to decide whether, on average, males have a better sense of direction and, in particular, a better frame of reference than females. Perform the test with α = 0.01.

b. Obtain boxplots and normal probability plots for both samples.

c. In Exercise 10.46, you used the pooled t-test to conduct the hypothesis test. Based on your graphs in part (b), which test is more appropriate, the pooled t-test or the Mann–Whitney test? Explain your answer.