A Researcher Believes a New Diet Should Improve Weight Gain $\alpha$

Multiple Choice

A researcher believes a new diet should improve weight gain.To test his hypothesis, a random sample of 10 people on the old diet and an independent random sample of 10 people on the new diet were selected.The selected people on the old diet gained an average of 5 pounds with a standard deviation of 2 pounds, while the average gain for selected people on the new diet was 8 pounds with a standard deviation of 1.5 pounds.Assuming that the values are normally distributed in each population, the researcher would like to use the t procedure with pooled standard deviation.To use this procedure, it must be shown that the variances from the two populations can be assumed to be equal.Using the sample data to test this assumption at $\alpha$ = 0.05, the observed F value is _______.

A) 1.78
B) 3.79
C) -3.79
D) 3.18
E) 1.33