Question

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is a U.S. government agency that regulates (you guessed it) food and drugs for consumer safety. One thing the FDA regulates is the allowable insect parts in various foods. You may be surprised to know that much of the processed food we eat contains insect parts. An example is flour.

When wheat is ground into flour, insects that were in the wheat are ground up as well. The mean number of insect parts allowed in 100 grams (about 3 ounces) of wheat flour is 75. If the FDA finds more than this number, they conduct further tests to determine if the flour is too contaminated by insect parts to be fit for human consumption.

The FDA takes a random sample of 35 bags of flour for evaluation and finds that they contain an average of 80 insect parts per 100 grams, with a standard deviation of 6.3.

Which hypothesis test should be used to determine whether the sample contains more than the allowed 75 insect parts per 100 grams?

• z-test for the population mean
• t-test for the population mean
• z-test for the population proportion
• t-test for the population proportion

Answer 1