Periodically, merrill lynch customers are asked to evaluate merrill lynch financial consultants and services. higher ratings on the client satisfaction survey indicate better service with 7 the maximum service rating. independent samples of service ratings for two financial consultants are summarized here. consultant a has 10 years of experience, whereas consultant b has 1 year of experience. use alpha 0.05 and test to see whether the consultant with more experience has the higher population mean service rating. round degrees of freedom to previous whole number.