A farmer, Mrs. Many, grows and sells two popular varieties of tomatoes: Better Boy tomatoes and Big Beef tomatoes. Both varieties of tomato take about 75 days to mature. She is designing a study to test the effectiveness of a new soil additive to increase tomato growth. She has 40 Better Boy tomatoes and 60 Big Beef tomatoes for her experiment. Required:
a. Preliminary research suggests that Better Boy tomatoes and Big Beef tomatoes respond differently to the additive. What sort of experimental design would you choose for this study, and why?
b. Explain why an experiment involving 40 Better Boy tomatoes and 60 Big Beef tomatoes is preferable to one involving 4 Better Boy tomatoes and 6 Big Beef tomatoes.
c. Describe a design for this experiment. Be sure to include a description of how you assign individuals to the treatment groups.