|  | Is there a difference in male / female smoking habits?
 
 The data from our suvey are shown at the left; the summary is above.
 (I used the =countif(range,text) Excel function to do the counting.
 Or you could sort the
    entries and subtract column numbers.)
 
 Procedure: difference of percentages.
 p1 = fraction of males who smoke
 p2 = fraction of females who smoke
 
 H0: the percentage of smokers is the same for males and females.
 p1 = p2
 
 Halpha: the percentages are different. (two tail)
 
 Standard deviation of percentage is sqrt(p*(1-p)/N)
 which gives sigma_p1 = 0.07521, sigma_p2 = 0.07526.
 
 Standard deviation
    of the difference is sqrt( s1^2 + s2^2 ) = 0.10
 
 Choosing significance level alpha=0.01, our two-tail cutoff is
 given by NORMINV(0.995, 0, 0.10) = 0.26.   In other words,
 a normal variable with mean=0 and sigma=0.1 is in
    the
 range (-0.26 < x < 0.26) 99% of the time.
 
 Our decision rule is to reject the null hypothesis
 if p1-p2 is >0.26  or p1-p2 is < -0.26.
 
 The result is that p1-p2 = 0.32 - 0.27 = 0.05,
 and we fail to reject the null hypothesis.
 
 Therefore from this data we can *not* conclude that
 there is a difference in the smoking habits
 of male and female Marlboro students.
 (At least, not at the 99% signficance
    level.)
 
 The confidence intervals give the same intuition;
 at 2sigma (95%), p1=0.32+-0.14; p2=0.27+-0.14.
 These ranges overlap, and so the two don't look all that different.
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