Chapter 12.1, Problem 11E

How would you answer the following question:

Next Wednesday’s meeting has been moved forward two days. What day is the meeting now that it has been rescheduled?

This question is ambiguous as “moved forward” can be interpreted in two different ways. Did you answer Monday or Friday? The authors of the paper “Even Abstract Motion Influences the Understanding of Time” (Metaphor and Symbol [2011]: 260–271) wondered if the answers Monday and Friday would be provided an equal proportion of the time. A sample of students at Stanford University were asked this question, and the responses are summarized in the following table.

The authors of the paper used a chi-squared goodness-of-fit test to test the null hypothesis H₀: p₁ = 0.50, p₂ = 0.50, where p₁ is the proportion who would respond Monday and p₂ is the proportion who would respond Friday. They reported X² = 11.00 and P-value < 0.001. What conclusion can be drawn from this test?