A software service firm has been growing relatively rapidly and concentrating on winning contracts and delivering on them. It has paid less attention to getting paid on time, and the investors who own the firm have established a target of $2500, maximum, on the average level of accounts receivable (the average per account, not the total across all accounts). If it is clear that this average is being exceeded, they want a corrective action. On the other hand, they agree with the management that the primary focus should be on winning contracts and delivering on them. So it has been decided to take periodic samples of accounts receivable to watch for clear evidence that the target is being exceeded. Here is the most recent one (in $):

950, 3200, 1230, 1500, 5500, 4500, 6340, 2900, 5375, 4300, 2200, 3100

(a) Specify and conduct an appropriate hypothesis test.

(b) In a couple of sentences, interpret the results of your hypothesis test.

(c) Could the simple point estimate from the sample be used, without doing a hypothesis test? If that were done, what would be the effect on “false positives?”