Question: Does exercise help blood pressure?

Several recent studies have suggested that people who suffer from abnormally high blood pressure can benefit from regular exercise. A medical researcher decides to test her belief that walking briskly for at least half an hour a day has the effect of lowering blood pressure. She conducts a small pilot study. If results from it are supportive, she will apply for funding for a larger study. She randomly samples three of her patients who have high blood pressure. She measures their systolic blood pressure initially and then again a month later after they participate in her exercise program. The table shows the results.

Subject Before After

1 150 130

2 165 140

3 135 120

The output shows some results of using software to analyze the data with a significance test.

Paired T for Before-After

N Mean St.Dev. SE Mean

Before 3 150.0 15.0 8.660

After 3 130.0 10.0 5.774

Difference 3 20.0 5.0 2.887

T-Test of mean difference = 0 (vs not = 0)

T-Value = 6.93 P-Value = 0.020

1. State the hypotheses to which the reported P-value refers.
2. Explain how to interpret the P-value. Does the exercise program seem beneficial to lowering blood pressure?
3. What are the assumptions on which this analysis is based?

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Solution: The downloadable solution consists of 2 pages
Deliverable: Word Document