Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2017 / ii / Paper 1 / 5J / i

The comparison is a nested-model F-test of the three time-by-diet interaction coefficients, with null hypothesis that all are zero. The reduced linear regression model has a common time slope and four diet-specific intercepts; the full model permits four slopes. It has eight fitted coefficients and $579-8=571$ residual degrees of freedom.The rounded sums of squares give the displayed approximation; the software reports $F=16.824$ using unrounded values. The quoted p-value $1.744\times 10^{-10}$ gives overwhelming evidence against equal log-weight growth slopes across diets under the normal linear model assumptions. Thus reject the common-slope hypothesis. Because repeated measurements on the same chicken may be correlated, the exact reference distribution requires independent, homoscedastic Gaussian errors; the displayed ordinary regression output by itself does not establish that assumption.