Lesson 8 PDF

LESSON 8: Hypothesis Testing
A hypothesis is an educated guess about something in the world around you. It should be testable, either by experiment
or observation.
Hypothesis Statements
If you are going to propose a hypothesis, it’s customary to write a statement. Your statement will look like this:
“If I… (do this to an independent variable) …. then (this will happen to the dependent variable).”
For example:
• If I (give exams at noon instead of 7) then (student test scores will improve).
A good hypothesis statement should:
• Include an “if” and “then” statement (according to the University of California).

• Include both the independent and dependent variables.
• Be testable by experiment, survey or other scientifically sound technique.
• Be based on information in prior research (either yours or someone else’s).
• Have design criteria (for engineering or programming projects).
Hypothesis Testing
Hypothesis testing in statistics is a way for you to test the results of a survey or experiment to see if you have meaningful
results.
Hypothesis testing can be one of the most confusing aspects mostly because before you can even perform a test, you
have to know what your null hypothesis is.
Steps in Hypothesis Testing
1. Figure out your null hypothesis

The null hypothesis, H0 is the commonly accepted fact; it is the opposite of the alternate hypothesis. Researchers
work to reject, nullify or disprove the null hypothesis. Researchers come up with an alternate hypothesis, one
that they think explains a phenomenon, and then work to reject the null hypothesis.
2. State your null hypothesis

a. Figure out the hypothesis from the problem.
b. Convert the hypothesis to math equation.
c. State what will happen if the hypothesis doesn’t come true.
What if the researcher doesn’t know what will happen?

a. State what will happen if the experiment doesn’t make any difference.
b. Figure out the alternate hypothesis. The alternate hypothesis is the opposite of the null hypothesis.
3. Choose what kind of test you need to perform

In hypothesis testing, you are asked to decide if a claim is true or not. One of the first steps is to look up a z-
score, and in order to do that, you need to know if it’s a one tailed test or two.
Critical Regions in a Hypothesis Test

In hypothesis tests, critical regions are ranges of the distributions where the values represent statistically
significant results. Analysts define the size and location of the critical regions by specifying both the significance
level (alpha) and whether the test is one-tailed or two-tailed.
What Are Tails in a Hypothesis Test?
a. Two-tailed Hypothesis Test
Two-tailed hypothesis tests are also known as nondirectional and two-sided tests because you can test
for effects in both directions. When you perform a two-tailed test, you split the significance level
percentage between both tails of the distribution.
Advantages of two-tailed hypothesis tests

You can detect both positive and negative effects. Two-tailed tests are standard in scientific
research where discovering any type of effect is usually of interest to researchers.
b. One-tailed Hypothesis Test

One-tailed hypothesis tests are also known as directional and one-sided tests because you can test for
effects in only one direction. When you perform a one-tailed test, the entire significance level percentage
goes into the extreme end of one tail of the distribution.
4. Either support or reject the null hypothesis.

In many statistical tests, you’ll want to either reject or support the null hypothesis. The null hypothesis can be
thought of as a nullifiable hypothesis. That means you can nullify it, or reject it. What happens if you reject the
null hypothesis? It gets replaced with the alternate hypothesis, which is what you think might actually be true
about a situation.
To reject the null hypothesis, perform the following steps:
1. State the null hypothesis. When you state the null hypothesis, you also have to state the alternate
hypothesis. Sometimes it is easier to state the alternate hypothesis first, because that’s the researcher’s
thoughts about the experiment.
2. Support or reject the null hypothesis. Several methods exist, depending on what kind of sample data
you have.
When to Reject the Null hypothesis

Basically, you reject the null hypothesis when your test value falls into the rejection region.
Example:
A researcher thinks that if knee surgery patients go to physical therapy twice a week (instead of 3 times), their recovery
period will be longer. Average recovery times for knee surgery patients is 8.2 weeks.
The hypothesis statement in this question is that the researcher believes the average recovery time is more than
8.2 weeks. It can be written in mathematical terms as:
H1: μ > 8.2
Next, you’ll need to state the null hypothesis (See: How to state the null hypothesis). That’s what will happen if
the researcher is wrong. In the above example, if the researcher is wrong then the recovery time is less than or
equal to 8.2 weeks. In math, that’s:
H0 μ ≤ 8.2

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LESSON 8: Hypothesis Testing

A good hypothesis statement should:

• Include an “if” and “then” statement (according to the University of California).

Steps in Hypothesis Testing

1. Figure out your null hypothesis

2. State your null hypothesis

What if the researcher doesn’t know what will happen?

3. Choose what kind of test you need to perform

Critical Regions in a Hypothesis Test

Advantages of two-tailed hypothesis tests

b. One-tailed Hypothesis Test

4. Either support or reject the null hypothesis.

To reject the null hypothesis, perform the following steps:

When to Reject the Null hypothesis

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