An experiment to test a new laundry detergent, SparkleKleen, is being conducted by a consumer advocate group. They would like to compare its performance with that of a laboratory standard detergent they have used in previous experiments. They can stain 16 swatches of cloth with 2 tsp of a common staining compound and then use a well-calibrated optical scanner to detect the amount of the stain that is left after washing with detergent. To save time in the experiment, several suggestions have been made. Comment on the possible merits and drawbacks
of each one.
a) Since data for the laboratory standard detergent are already available from previous experiments, for this experiment wash all 16 swatches with SparkleKleen, and compare the results with the previous data.
b) Use both detergents with eight separate runs each, but to save time, use only a 10-second wash time with very hot water.
c) To ease bookkeeping, run successively all of the standard detergent washes on eight swatches, then run all of the SparkleKleen washes on the other eight swatches.
d) Rather than run the experiment, use data from the company that produced SparkleKleen, and compare them with past data from the standard detergent.