Can pleasant aromas help a student learn better? Hirsch and Johnston, of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, believe that the presence of a floral scent can improve a person's learning ability in certain situations. In their experiment, 22 people worked through a set of two pencil and paper mazes six times, three times while wearing a floral-scented mask and three times wearing an unscented mask. Individuals were randomly assigned to wear the floral mask on either their first three tries or their last three tries. Participants put on their masks one minute before starting the first trial in each group to minimize any distracting effect. Subjects recorded whether they found the scent inherently positive, inherently negative, or if they were indifferent to it. Testers measured the length of time it took subjects to complete each of the six trials. The data are available in the scent data set.
a) Make a list of questions one might like to ask about this situation and for which the data collected provide some information.
b) For which of these questions do we know a statistical method?
c) Perform an analysis to answer one of the questions identified in b).