Question: Do poets die young? According to William Butler Yeats, "She is the Gaelic muse, for she gives inspiration to those she persecutes. The Gaelic poets die young, for she is restless, and will not let them remain long on earth." One study designed to investigate this issue examined the age at death for writers from different cultures and genders. Three categories of writers examined were novelists, poets, and nonfiction writers. The ages at death for female writers in these categories from North America are given in Table. Most of the writers are from the United States, but Canadian and Mexican writers are also included.
(a) Use graphical and numerical methods to describe the data.
(b) Examine the assumptions necessary for ANOVA. Summarize your findings.
(c) Run the ANOVA and report the results.
(d) Use a contrast to compare the poets with the two other types of writers. Do you think that the quotation from Yeats justifies the use of a one-sided alternative for examining this contrast? Explain your answer.
(e) Use another contrast to compare the novelists with the nonfiction writers. Explain your choice for an alternative hypothesis for this contrast.
(f) Use a multiple-comparisons procedure to compare the three means. How do the conclusions from this approach compare with those using the contrasts?
