Rare Events, the Sample, and the Decision and Conclusion Quiz

PDF page 537: The thinking process in hypothesis testing can be summarized as follows: You want to test whether or not a particular property of the population is true. You make an assumption about the true population mean for numerical data or the true population proportion for categorical data. This assumption is the null hypothesis. Then you gather sample data that is representative of the population. From this sample data you compute the sample mean (or the sample proportion). If the value that you observe is very unlikely to occur (a rare event) if the null hypothesis is true, then you wonder why this is happening. A plausible explanation is that the null hypothesis is false. For example, Didi and Ali are at a birthday party of a very wealthy friend. They hurry to be first in line to grab a prize from a tall basket that they cannot see inside because they will be blindfolded. There are 200 plastic bubbles in the basket, and Didi and Ali have been told that there is only one with a $100 bill. Didi is the first person to reach into the basket and pull 1 out a bubble. Her bubble contains a $100 bill. The probability of this happening is = 0.005. Because this is so unlikely, 200 Ali is hoping that what the two of them were told is wrong and there are more $100 bills in the basket. A rare event has occurred (Didi getting the $100 bill) so Ali doubts the assumption about only one $100 bill being in the basket.

PDF page 537: The thinking process in hypothesis testing can be summarized as follows: You want to test whether or not a particular property of the population is true. You make an assumption about the true population mean for numerical data or the true population proportion for categorical data. This assumption is the null hypothesis. Then you gather sample data that is representative of the population. From this sample data you compute the sample mean (or the sample proportion). If the value that you observe is very unlikely to occur (a rare event) if the null hypothesis is true, then you wonder why this is happening. A plausible explanation is that the null hypothesis is false. For example, Didi and Ali are at a birthday party of a very wealthy friend. They hurry to be first in line to grab a prize from a tall basket that they cannot see inside because they will be blindfolded. There are 200 plastic bubbles in the basket, and Didi and Ali have been told that there is only one with a $100 bill. Didi is the first person to reach into the basket and pull 1 out a bubble. Her bubble contains a $100 bill. The probability of this happening is = 0.005. Because this is so unlikely, 200 Ali is hoping that what the two of them were told is wrong and there are more $100 bills in the basket. A rare event has occurred (Didi getting the $100 bill) so Ali doubts the assumption about only one $100 bill being in the basket.

PDF page 537: The thinking process in hypothesis testing can be summarized as follows: You want to test whether or not a particular property of the population is true. You make an assumption about the true population mean for numerical data or the true population proportion for categorical data. This assumption is the null hypothesis. Then you gather sample data that is representative of the population. From this sample data you compute the sample mean (or the sample proportion). If the value that you observe is very unlikely to occur (a rare event) if the null hypothesis is true, then you wonder why this is happening. A plausible explanation is that the null hypothesis is false. For example, Didi and Ali are at a birthday party of a very wealthy friend. They hurry to be first in line to grab a prize from a tall basket that they cannot see inside because they will be blindfolded. There are 200 plastic bubbles in the basket, and Didi and Ali have been told that there is only one with a $100 bill. Didi is the first person to reach into the basket and pull 1 out a bubble. Her bubble contains a $100 bill. The probability of this happening is = 0.005. Because this is so unlikely, 200 Ali is hoping that what the two of them were told is wrong and there are more $100 bills in the basket. A rare event has occurred (Didi getting the $100 bill) so Ali doubts the assumption about only one $100 bill being in the basket.

PDF page 537: After you collect data and obtain the test statistic (the sample mean, sample proportion, or other test statistic), you can determine the probability of obtaining that test statistic when the null hypothesis is true. This probability is called the p-value. When the p-value is very small, it means that the observed test statistic is very unlikely to happen if the null hypothesis is true. This gives significant evidence to suggest that the null hypothesis is false, and to reject it in favor of the alternative hypothesis. In practice, to reject the null hypothesis we want the p-value to be smaller than 0.05 (5 percent) or sometimes even smaller than 0.01 (1 percent).

PDF page 537: After you collect data and obtain the test statistic (the sample mean, sample proportion, or other test statistic), you can determine the probability of obtaining that test statistic when the null hypothesis is true. This probability is called the p-value. When the p-value is very small, it means that the observed test statistic is very unlikely to happen if the null hypothesis is true. This gives significant evidence to suggest that the null hypothesis is false, and to reject it in favor of the alternative hypothesis. In practice, to reject the null hypothesis we want the p-value to be smaller than 0.05 (5 percent) or sometimes even smaller than 0.01 (1 percent).

PDF page 537: After you collect data and obtain the test statistic (the sample mean, sample proportion, or other test statistic), you can determine the probability of obtaining that test statistic when the null hypothesis is true. This probability is called the p-value. When the p-value is very small, it means that the observed test statistic is very unlikely to happen if the null hypothesis is true. This gives significant evidence to suggest that the null hypothesis is false, and to reject it in favor of the alternative hypothesis. In practice, to reject the null hypothesis we want the p-value to be smaller than 0.05 (5 percent) or sometimes even smaller than 0.01 (1 percent).

PDF page 538: Suppose a baker claims that his bread height is more than 15 cm, on average. Several of his customers do not believe him. To persuade his customers that he is right, the baker decides to do a hypothesis test. He bakes 10 loaves of bread. The mean height of the sample loaves is 17 cm. The baker knows from baking hundreds of loaves of bread that the standard deviation for the height is 0.5 cm and the distribution of heights is normal.

PDF page 538: Suppose a baker claims that his bread height is more than 15 cm, on average. Several of his customers do not believe him. To persuade his customers that he is right, the baker decides to do a hypothesis test. He bakes 10 loaves of bread. The mean height of the sample loaves is 17 cm. The baker knows from baking hundreds of loaves of bread that the standard deviation for the height is 0.5 cm and the distribution of heights is normal.

PDF page 538: The null hypothesis could be H0: μ ≤ 15. The alternate hypothesis is Ha: μ > 15.

PDF page 538: The words is more than translates as a ">" so "μ > 15" goes into the alternate hypothesis. The null hypothesis must contradict the alternate hypothesis.

PDF page 538: The words is more than translates as a ">" so "μ > 15" goes into the alternate hypothesis. The null hypothesis must contradict the alternate hypothesis.

PDF page 538: ̄ p-value = P( x > 17), which is approximately zero. Because the p-value is almost 0, we conclude that obtaining a sample height of 17 cm or higher from 10 loaves of bread is very unlikely if the true mean height is 15 cm. We reject the null hypothesis and conclude that there is sufficient evidence to claim that the true population mean height of the baker’s loaves of bread is higher than 15 cm.