An eating disorders clinic would like to evaluate theeffectiveness of a mindfulness training program on binge eatingdisorder (BED). A psychologist was therefore hired to conduct asmall study to examine the potential effect of mindfulness trainingon number of binges per month. The psychologist recruited 10patients in the clinic to participate in a mindfulness trainingprogram and 12 patients in the clinic with similar demographics whodo not participate in the mindfulness program. Afterward, allparticipants reported the number of binges from the previous month.The data are listed in the table below. The psychologist is notpredicting a particular direction of the potential differencesbetween the two groups and she sets the alpha level at .05 for thehypothesis test.

1. a) What is the dependent (outcome) variable? What is theindependent (grouping) variable?

1. b) Create the null and alternative hypotheses for this study,using both words and symbol notation

1. c) Calculate M₁ andM₂

1. d) Calculate df₁ , df₂,and df_total  

1. e) Calculate ²₁ and²₂ (estimated variance for population 1 andvariance for population 2)

1. f) Calculate the pooled variance for the two populations

1. g) Use the pooled variance to calculate the variance forsampling distribution 1 and the variance for sampling distribution2