Hypothesis Testing

Abstract

In the last chapter, we made inferences about a population parameter by creating a confidence interval from a sample. We will now look at another method, called hypothesis testing, for making inferences about a population parameter. In hypothesis testing we infer that the stated null hypothesis (H₀) is true until there is convincing but not perfect evidence that the null hypothesis is not true. Our evidence is from the sample that we obtain. We conclude that there is convincing evidence when the p-value is less than the alpha value. The p-value will be discussed later in this chapter.