A steel company is considering the relocation of one of its manufacturing plants. The company’s executives have selected four areas that they believe are suitable locations. However, they want to determine if the average wages are significantly different in any of the locations, since this could have a major impact on the cost of production. A survey of hourly wages of similar workers in each of the four areas I performed with the following results.

Hourly Wages ($)

Area 1

Area 2

Area 3

Area 4

1

11

15

13

20

2

12

16

14

16

3

11

18

15

18

4

13

17

15

17

5

10

14

12

16

a. Do the data indicate a significant difference among the average hourly wages in the four areas? Construct the 10 steps of hypothesis testing using α = 0.05 to answer the question.

b. What assumptions were mad in performing the test in part a? Do the data appear to satisfy these assumptions? Explain.