Students investigated whether certain web browsers use significantly more RAM th
ID: 3200861 • Letter: S
Question
Students investigated whether certain web browsers use significantly more RAM than others. To test this, they performed a simplistic experiment. They randomly obtained six laptops of the same brand, model, and operating system. The laptops were then formatted. Next, downloaded on each laptop were the three web browsers of interest. All applications were then closed, except for the monitoring application that showed how mu Ch RAM the laptop was using in real time. The students randomly chose which laptop. would open which web browser, such that each web browser was tested on only two laptops. From a list of comparable websites, the students began visiting the websites one by one on the browser, opening a new tab for each new website. They continued until the first time at least 90% of the RAM was used. At that point, they recorded how many websites were visited - the same as the number of open tabs. The laptops were also tested in a random order. What was (or were) the factor(s) for this experiment? How many treatments were there? What were the experimental units? What was the response variable? Name one controlled variable. Consider the factor(s) and the response variable. For each one, determine if it is categorical or numerical data. If numerical, specify if it is discrete or continuous. Was this a randomized complete block design? Why or why not?Explanation / Answer
a) here the experimental units are the laptops. because the experiment was done on the laptops
there were 6 experimental units
here the main factor was the performance of web browsers.
there were also other factors like : brand,Operating system , model of the laptops etc.
there were 3 treatments as 3 types of web browsers were used
the response variable was the "number of tabs open".
one controlled variable is the brand of the laptop.
b) here the response variable is the number of tabs opened. hence it is numerical and discrete.
main factor is the type of web browsers which is categorical.
other factors like brand,model,operating system are also categorical.
c) no it is not a randomized block design(RBD)
because in RBD, there is one nuisance factor with respect to which we form the blocks. but here is no such factor. if the brand or model or operating system were different then we could have done RBD.