Question: How long did I work? A psychologist wants to know if the difficulty of a task influences our estimate of how long we spend working at it. She designs two sets of mazes that subjects can work through on a computer. One set has easy mazes and the other has difficult mazes. Subjects work until told to stop (after 6 minutes, but subjects do not know this). They are then asked to estimate how long they worked. The psychologist has 30 students available to serve as subjects.
(a) Describe an experiment using a completely randomized design to learn the effect of difficulty on estimated time.
(b) Describe a matched pairs experimental design using the same 30 subjects.
(c) Which design would be more likely to detect a difference in the effects of the treatments? Explain.