An airline wants to select a computer software package for its reservation system. Three software packages (1, 2, and 3) are commercially available. The airline will choose the package that bumps as few passengers as possible during a month. An experiment is set up in which each 590 independent observations are made across the 3 packages to make reservations.
The number of passengers bumped each week is obtained, which gives rise to the following Excel output:

ANOVA
Source of Variation SS df MS F P-value F crit
Between Groups 4662.2 2 2331.1 7.137 0.001
Within Groups 191729.2
Total 196391.4

(a) What is the within groups degrees of freedom for this analysis? Explain how you obtain your answer.
(b) What is the within-group mean squares? Explain how you obtain your answer.
(c) What is the F critical value for this test? Explain how you obtain your answer.
(d) At a significance level of 1%, what conclusion can you infer? Explain how you obtain your answer.