Question

How would you describe Hypothesis Testing to a friend outside of this statistics class? Create a problem, you don't have to use Formulas.

EXAMPLE:
Hello! I would explain the hypothesis in words from symbols H0 = 85. What this means is that we want to test whether the average score on a statistics test is 85 or not. I would then explain the sample statistic in words (students, please do this), transferring it to a z-value. I would then explain that a small p-value means that we have stronger evidence that 85 will not be the mean of our statistics test, etc....... Thats an example of how it should be in about 150 words describe.

Answer 1

Hello. I would like to explain the hypothesis stating that Ho= 3. We want to test whether children watch an average of 3 hours of TV per week. Most samples we select should have a mean close to or equal to 3 hours if the claim we are testing is true. Suppose we measure a sample mean equal to 4 hours per week that children watch TV. To make a decision, we need to evaluate how likely this sample outcome is, if the population mean stated by the null hypothesis (3 hours per week) is true. We use a test statistic(z) to determine this likelihood which tells us how far, or how many standard deviations, a sample mean is from the population mean. The larger the value of the test statistic, the further the distance, or number of standard deviations, a sample mean is from the population mean stated in the null hypothesis. We use the value of the test statistic to make a decision about the null hypothesis which is based on the probability of obtaining a sample mean, given that the value stated in the null hypothesis is true. The probability of obtaining a sample mean, is the p-value. A small p-value (typically ? 0.05) indicates strong evidence that 3 will not be the mean of our statistics test and so we reject the null hypothesis. A large p-value (> 0.05) indicates weak evidence against the null hypothesis, so we fail to reject the null hypothesis.