CE51001/51018 - Research Methods

Statistics Primer
Hypothesis Testing
One of the things we often want to know are whether or not two groups are different. E.g. is one drug more
effective than another? The statistical process for doing this is hypothesis testing.
Key Elements
The key elements in hypothesis testing are:
null hypothesis
Denoted H0, usually the hypothesis we want to reject. It is often of the form that there is no
difference between two samples.
The alternative hypothesis
Denotes Ha, usually the hypothesis we want to prove. Often of the form that there is a
significant difference between two samples.
Test statistic
A statistic calculated from the sample data that is used to test whether or not we can reject
the null hypothesis.
Rejection region
This is the range of values for the test statistic for which the null hypothesis can be rejected.
Conclusion
The result of the test.
We often refer to one-tailed and two-tailed tests. One-tailed tests are used where we are seeking to show that
one value is greater or less than another one. Two-tailed tests apply where we are merely seeking to show
that two populations are different. It is more common to apply two-tailed tests.
We usually seek to achieve our aim by seeking to disprove the null hypothesis, rather than to prove the
alternative hypothesis. There are two sorts of errors that we can make:
Type I
Reject H0 when H0 is true. The probability of a type I error is usually denoted by . This
probability is called the significance level for a hypothesis test.
Type II
Fail to reject H0 when H0 is false.
The outcome of a hypothesis test is either to reject the null hypothesis or fail to reject the null hypothesis. It
is not to accept the null hypothesis.
Methodology
Typically we want to test whether a statistic (the most common example is the mean) calculated from
samples from two populations, A and B, differs significantly between the two populations.
Suppose the statistic is M. The procedure is as follows:
Decide on the significance level.
Calculate the statistic for the two populations. Suppose the values obtained are MA and MB.
Formulate the null and alternative hypotheses.
Calculate the test statistic.
See if the test statistic is in the rejection region.
Examples of hypothesis testing can be found in Sessions 3 and 4.

23/10/2003