An aerospace engineering student conducted an experiment to investigate whether a 3-blade rotor design or a 4-blade rotor design provides longer continuous flight endurance for a specific quadcopter model. An independent measures design was used, testing a sample of 14 identical drones, randomly allocated to one of the two rotor configurations. All drones were flown under identical environmental conditions until their batteries depleted. The flight times (in minutes) recorded for each drone are shown in the table below.
| Flight endurance (minutes) under different rotor designs | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 3-Blade Rotor Group | 4-Blade Rotor Group | ||
| Drone | Flight Time | Drone | Flight Time |
| 1 | 18.2 | 1 | 15.4 |
| 2 | 21.5 | 2 | 17.0 |
| 3 | 17.0 | 3 | 19.5 |
| 4 | 19.5 | 4 | 14.2 |
| 5 | 21.5 | 5 | 16.8 |
| 6 | 22.8 | 6 | 18.2 |
| 7 | 20.1 | 7 | 19.5 |
Outline how the data in this study would be ranked before conducting the appropriate non-parametric inferential statistical test.
