10.37 Beer and blood alcohol. How well does the number of beers a student drinks predict his or her blood alcohol content (BAC)? Sixteen student volunteers at Ohio State University drank a randomly assigned number of 12-ounce cans of beer. Thirty minutes after consuming their last beer, a police officer measured their BAC. Here are the data:16

Student12345678
Beers52983735
BAC0.100.030.190.120.040.0950.070.06
Student910111213141516
Beers35465714
BAC0.020.050.070.100.0850.090.010.05

The students were equally divided between men and women and differed in weight and usual drinking habits. Because of this variation, many students don’t believe that number of drinks predicts BAC well.

  1. (a) Make a scatterplot of the data. Find the equation of the least-squares regression line for predicting BAC from number of beers and add this line to your plot. What is r2 for these data? Briefly summarize what your data analysis shows.

  2. (b) Is there significant evidence that drinking more beers increases BAC on the average in the population of all students? State hypotheses, give a test statistic and P-value, and state your conclusion.

  3. (c) Steve thinks his BAC will be below the legal limit to drive 30 minutes after he drinks five beers. The legal limit is BAC = 0.08. Give a 90% prediction interval for Steve’s BAC. Can he be confident he won’t be above the legal limit?