A company revised a long-standing policy to eliminate the time clocks and cards for nonexe...

A company revised a long-standing policy to eliminate the time clocks and cards for nonexempt employees. Along with this change, all employees (exempt and nonexempt) were expected to account for their own time on the job as well as absences due to sickness, vacation, holidays, and so on. The previous policy of allocating a certain number of sick days was eliminated-if an employee was sick, he or she was given time off with pay; otherwise, he or she was expected to be working.

In order to see how well the new program was working, the records of a random sample of 15 employees were examined to determine the number of sick days this year (under the new plan) and the corresponding number for the preceding year. The data are shown here:

a. Obtain the mean and standard deviation for each column.

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b. Based on the sample data, what might you conclude (infer) about the new policies? Explain your reason(s).