Chapter 11.2, Problem 18E

Data were collected on the top 1000 financial advisers by Barron’s. Merrill Lynch had 239 people on the list and Morgan Stanley had 121 people on the list. A sample of 16 of the Merrill Lynch advisers and 10 of the Morgan Stanley advisers showed that the advisers managed many very large accounts with a large variance in the total amount of funds managed. The standard deviation of the amount managed by the Merrill Lynch advisers was s₁ = $587 million. The standard deviation of the amount managed by the Morgan Stanley advisers was s₂ = $489 million. Conduct a hypothesis test at α = .10 to determine if there is a significant difference in the population variances for the amounts managed by the two companies. What is your conclusion about the variability in the amount of funds managed by advisers from the two firms?