An engineer for the Allied Steel Company has the responsibility of estimating the mean carbon content of a particular day's steel output, using a random sample of 15 rods from that day's output. The actual population distribution of carbon content is not known to be normal, but graphic displays of the engineer's sample results indicate that the assumption of normality is not unreasonable. The process is newly developed, and there are no historical data on the variability of the process. In estimating this day's mean carbon content, the primary reason the engineer should use a t-confidence interval rather than a z-confidence interval is because the engineer