One problem with owning fishing boats is that barnacles, a type of sea creature, attach themselves to the bottom of boats. Two new barnacle resistant paints have come on the market, each claiming to resist barnacle infestation. A fishing boat owner tested the two brands of paints by painting the sides of several boats. He randomly chose 16 identical boats. Half were painted with Brand A paint and the other half with Brand B paint. The two paints were the same color. At the end of the fishing season, the boats were raised and the barnacles scraped off and weighed in pounds. The 95% confidence interval for the true mean weight of the barnacles for Brand A minus the true mean weight for Brand B is (5.3, 2.7) Assume independent random samples were taken from populations that were normally distributed. Assume equal population variances.
Choose the best interpretation below for the confidence interval in the problem.
a) We are 95% confident that the true mean barnacle weight for Brand A is greater than the true mean barnacle weight for Brand B.
b) We are 95% confident that there is no statistically significant difference between the true mean barnacle weights for the two paints.
c) We are 95% confident that the true mean barnacle weight for Brand A is less than the true mean barnacle weight for Brand B.
d) None of the above conclusions are correct.