University of South Florida

NGR 7848

Project Option 1: Burp…Excuse Me!
Burping (also known as "belching" or "eructation") is one way the human body expels excess gas in your
digestive system. It occurs when your stomach fills with air, which can be caused by swallowing food and
liquids. Drinking carbonated beverages, such as soda, is known to increase burping because its bubbles
have tiny amounts of carbon dioxide in them.
As an avid soda drinker and statistics student, you notice you tend to burp more after drinking root beer
than you do after drinking cola. You decide to determine whether there is a difference between the
number of burps while drinking a root beer and while drinking a cola. To determine this, you select 20
students at random from high school, have each drink both types of beverages, and record the number of
burps. You randomize which beverage each participant drinks first by flipping a coin. Both beverages
contain 12 fluid ounces. Here are the results:
Participan
t
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1
0
11 1
2
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Root beer 6 8 7 7 4 2 3 6 3 8 2 1 5 1 3 4 2 4 5 10
Cola 4 5 5 6 2 3 3 5 4 7 4 0 5 3 3 2 1 1 7 7
Part A: Based on these results, what should you report about the difference between the number of
burps from drinking root beer and those from drinking cola? Give appropriate statistical evidence
to support your response at the α = 0.05 significance level.
Parameter
We want to estimate the difference between the number of burps a person makes when drinking Root beer
and the number of burps a person makes when drinking Cola.
H0: ud = 0
H0: ud  0
Where ud is the mean difference of number of burps between Soda and Root beer (Soda - Root beer)
Conditions
S: The problem states that the students (participants) were chosen at random.
I: we can deduce that there are more than 10(20) = 1200 students at the school.
N: We weren’t told that the data was Normal and the sample size is small ( < 30), thus, we will see
graphically if the data is normal.