Chapter 7: hypothesis testing

• hypothesis


  a statement made about a population parameter
• hypothesis testing

  testing a sample of a population in order to see if a hypothesis can be assumed to be true
• test statistic

  the result of the test calculated from the sample
• null hypothesis

  written as h0:p=x

  it is the hypothesis you assume to be correct
• alternative hypothesis

  written as h1:p<x or h1:p>x or h1:p=!x

  it is the parameter if our assumption is wrong
• one tailed test

  there is only one critical region to be found, and the original significance level is used.
• two tailed test

  there are two critical regions, and the significance level is halved
• critical region

  it is the range of values that would lead you to reject h0
• critical value

  the first value in the critical region
• actual significance level

  the actual probability of a test statistic being in the critical region. it is the probability of incorrectly rejecting h0.