You are presenting the results of a research paper at a regional meeting. Your study was focused on the relationship between medication and depression level. You tell your audience that you ran a t-test to compare the depression levels of 1000 people taking the medication to 1000 people not taking the medication. You point out that the mean level of depression for medication users is 10.1 and the mean level of depression for non-users is 10.8. You announce to your audience that this finding is significant at the .05 level.
(a) Some doofus stands up and says, "What do you mean you did a t-test? What good is that? You can just look at the numbers and see they are different. Why did you have to do any kind of test?" How would you respond (3 or 4 sentences).
(b) Because some people are only happy when they are arguing, this guy throws another question at you. He says, "What do you mean the findings are significant? The numbers for the two groups are practically the same. I would hardly call that significant! It is barely meaningful! Also, what is this .05 level of which you speak? Are you just trying to confuse us with your statistical mumbo jumbo?!?" How would you respond (3 or 4 sentences).