Question: Room temperature and dexterity An expert on worker performance is interested in the effect of room temperature on the performance of tasks requiring manual dexterity. She chooses temperatures of 70°F and 90°F as treatments. The response variable is the number of correct insertions, during a 30-minute period, in a peg-and-hole apparatus that requires the use of both hands simultaneously. Each subject is trained on the apparatus and then asked to make as many insertions as possible in 30 minutes of continuous effort.
(a) Describe a completely randomized design to compare dexterity at 70° and 90° using 20 volunteer subjects.
(b) Because individuals differ greatly in dexterity, the wide variation in individual scores may hide the systematic effect of temperature unless there are many subjects in each group. Describe in detail the design of a matched pairs experiment in which each subject serves as his or her own control.