A veterinarian does research on the causes of enteroliths, stones that develop in the colon of horses. She suspects that feeding

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A veterinarian does research on the causes of enteroliths, stones that develop in the colon of horses. She suspects that feeding

alfalfa might be a cause. To investigate that suspicion, she selects five horses that are known to have enteroliths and compares the number of flakes of alfalfa they have eaten over a month with the number of flakes eaten by five horses free of enteroliths. If she calculates a two-sample confidence interval by hand for the difference in the mean number of flakes fed to horses with and without enteroliths the degrees of freedom she should use are:
10.
8.
4.
5.

Mathematics

1 answer:

PIT_PIT [11.9K] · Answer 1 · 2026-04-07T16:20:07+03:00

Answer: 8

Step-by-step explanation:

The degrees of freedom for the t-distribution used while testing the difference between two population means can be calculated using the formula:

$df= n_1+n_2-2$

, where $n_1$ represents the size of the first sample and

$n_1$ indicates the size of the second sample.

In this case,

the veterinarian selects five horses that have previously been diagnosed with enteroliths and assesses their monthly intake of alfalfa flakes against that of five horses without enteroliths.

This means we consider $n_1=5$ and $n_2=5$

To derive a two-sample confidence interval manually for the average flakes difference between those horses with and without enteroliths, the degrees of freedom required would thus be

$df= 5+5-2=8$

Consequently, the final answer is 8.