You are the microbiologist at a national food processing chain. Two independent subcontractors are bidding to produce your latest food item that should really boost sales. It is your job to determine which plant should get the bid based on their microbial cleanliness of their product. You homogenize and culture three samples of their product.

Number of colonies
Plant A; 2000, 2578, 2100 Mean = 2226 SD= 308.9142
Plant B: 1780, 1900, 1998 Mean = 1892.667 SD= 109.1849
p- value = 0.152835
Question: Which plant will you recommend get the bid? What scientific information did you base your answer on?

To determine which plant should get the bid based on their microbial cleanliness, you can compare the mean and standard deviation of the number of colonies in the samples from each plant.

In this case, the mean number of colonies for Plant A is 2226, while for Plant B it is 1892.667. The standard deviation for Plant A is 308.9142, while for Plant B it is 109.1849.

Based on these statistics, it appears that Plant A has a higher mean number of colonies but also a higher standard deviation compared to Plant B.

To make a more informed decision, you should also consider the p-value, which measures the level of statistical significance. In this case, the p-value is 0.152835, which is above the commonly accepted threshold of 0.05 for statistical significance.

Therefore, the scientific information used to base the recommendation would suggest that there is not a significant difference in the microbial cleanliness between the two plants. It means that there is no strong evidence to support the conclusion that one plant is cleaner than the other.

In such a scenario, other factors such as production capacity, cost, delivery time, and overall reputation of the plants should also be taken into consideration to make a final recommendation.