When 40 people used the Weight Watchers diet for one year, their mean weight loss was 3.00 lb. (based on data from "Comparison of the Atkins, Ornish, Weight Watchers, and Zone Diets for Weight Loss and Heart Disease Reduction," by Dansinger, et al., Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 293, No. 1). Assume that the standard deviation of all such weight changes is ? = 4.9 lb. We shall use a 0.01 significance level to test the claim that the mean weight loss is greater than 0.
a) Set up the null and alternative hypotheses, and perform the hypothesis test.
b) Based on these results, does the diet appear to be effective? Does the diet appear to have practical significance?