Question

A study was conducted to determine whether an expectant mother's cigarette smoking has any effect on the bone mineral content of her otherwise healthy child. A sample of 77 newborns whose mothers smoked during pregnancy has mean bone mineral content x-bar1 = 0.098 g/cm and standard deviation s1 = 0.026 g/cm; a sample of 161 infants whose mothers did not smoke has mean x-bar2 = 0.095 g/cm and standard deviation s2 = 0.025 g/cm. Assume that the underlying population variances are equal.

a. Are the two samples paired or independent?
b. State the null and alternative hypotheses of the two-sided test.
c. Conduct the test at the 0.05 level of significance. What do you conclude?