HYPOTHESIS TESTING

E. Çiğdem Keleş, Ph.D, Assist. Prof.

Yeditepe University, Faculty of Medicine
Biostatistics and Medical Informatics
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Statistical Inference is a process of drawing
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making decisions about the populations.
One that has receieved much attention is
hypothesis testing.
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Statistical hypothesis testing can be applied to

address conjectures such as following:

⚫ Alchol consumption, like smoking, might be related to

periodontal diseases.
⚫ A 5-year survival rate of cancer is higher for females
than for males.
⚫ Apolipoprotein E E4 allele is strongly associated with
late –onset familial Alzheimer’s disease.
 In hypothesis testing, the researchers must
clearly define the population under investigation,
⚫ State the hypotheses to be tested, have to be clear
⚫ Specify the significance level
⚫ Select a sample from the population

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⚫ Collect data senaryo
⚫ Select a test statistic anne ama sonra
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⚫ Perform the calculations for the statistical test test
⚫ Draw a conclusion
⚫ Develop appropriate interpretations of the
conclusions
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NONSTATISTICAL HYPOTHESIS TESTING

A criminal trial is an example of hypothesis testing without
the statistics.
In a trial a jugge must decide between two hypotheses. The
null hypothesis is
H0: The defendant is innocent

The alternative hypothesis or research hypothesis is

H1: The defendant is guilty

The judge does not know which hypothesis is true. They

must make a decision on the basis of evidence presented
Hohypotheses null hypothes s
yerler değ ş rse
Ha H alternat e kar seks olur
 except and not reject

NONSTATISTICAL HYPOTHESIS TESTING

In the language of statistics convicting the defendant is
called rejecting the null hypothesis in favor of the
alternative hypothesis. That is, the judge is saying that
there is enough evidence to conclude that the defendant is
guilty (i.e., there is enough evidence to support the
alternative hypothesis).

If the judge acquits it is stating that there is not enough

evidence to support the alternative hypothesis. Notice that
the judge is not saying that the defendant is innocent, only
that there is not enough evidence to support the alternative
hypothesis. That is why we never say that we accept the
null hypothesis,
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TYPES OF ERRORS
TYPES OF ERRORS
TYPES OF ERRORS

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TYPES OF ERRORS kllanılır

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We say type I error is committed if the null

hypothesis is rejected when it is true
NONSTATISTICAL HYPOTHESIS TESTING
There are two possible errors.
A Type I error occurs when we reject a true null
hypothesis. That is, a Type I error occurs when
the judge convicts an innocent person. We would
want the probability of this type of error [maybe
0.001 – beyond a reasonable doubt] to be very
small for a criminal trial where a conviction
results in the death penalty, whereas for a civil
trial, where conviction might result in someone
having to “pay for damages to a wrecked auto”,we
would be willing for the probability to be larger
[0.49 – preponderance of the evidence ]
P(Type I error) = α [usually 0.05 or 0.01]
TYPES OF ERRORS
TYPES OF ERRORS
TYPES OF ERRORS

We say type II error is committed if the null

hypothesis is not rejected when it is false.
NONSTATISTICAL HYPOTHESIS TESTING
A Type II error occurs when we don’t reject a false null
hypothesis [accept the null hypothesis]. That occurs when a
guilty defendant is acquitted.
In practice, this type of error is by far the most serious
mistake we normally make. For example, if we test the
hypothesis that the amount of medication in a heart pill is
equal to a value which will cure your heart problem and
“accept the null hypothesis that the amount is ok”. Later
on we find out that the average amount is WAY too large
and people die from “too much medication” [I wish we had
rejected the hypothesis and threw the pills in the trash
can], it’s too late because we shipped the pills to the public.
NONSTATISTICAL HYPOTHESIS TESTING
The probability of a Type I error is denoted as α
(Greek letter alpha). The probability of a type II
error is β (Greek letter beta).

The two probabilities are inversely related.

Decreasing one increases the other, for a fixed
sample size.

In other words, you can’t have α and β both real

small for any old sample size. You may have to
take a much larger sample size, or in the court
example, you need much more evidence.
NONSTATISTICAL HYPOTHESIS TESTING
The critical concepts are theses:
1. There are two hypotheses, the null and the alternative
hypotheses.
2. The procedure begins with the assumption that the null
hypothesis is true.
3. The goal is to determine whether there is enough evidence
to infer that the alternative hypothesis is true, or the null
is not likely to be true.
4. There are two possible decisions:
Conclude that there is enough evidence to support the
alternative hypothesis. Reject the null.
Conclude that there is not enough evidence to support the
alternative hypothesis. Fail to reject the null.
CONCEPTS OF HYPOTHESIS TESTING
The two hypotheses are called the null
hypothesis and the other the alternative or
research hypothesis. The usual notation is:
H0: — the ‘null’ hypothesis

H1: — the ‘alternative’ or ‘research’ hypothesis

The null hypothesis (H0) will always state that

the parameter equals the value specified in
the alternative hypothesis (H1)
 Hypothesis

In general, many scientific investigations start by

expressing a hypothesis.
For example, Mackowiak et al (1992) hypothesized
that the average normal (i.e., for healthy people) body
temperature is less than the widely accepted value of
98.6F.
If we denote the population mean of normal body
temperature as µ, then we can express this hypothesis
as µ < 98.6.
 Null and alternative hypotheses

The null hypothesis H0 usually reflects the “status

quo” or “nothing of interest”.
In contrast, we refer to our hypothesis (i.e., the
hypothesis we are investigating through a scientific
study) as the alternative hypothesis and denote it as
HA.
For hypothesis testing, we focus on the null
hypothesis since it tends to be simpler.
 Null and alternative hypotheses

Consider the body temperature example, where we

want to examine the null hypothesis H0 : µ = 98.6
against the alternative hypothesis HA : µ < 98.6.
 Hypothesis testing

To decide whether we should reject the null hypothesis, we

quantify the empirical support (provided by the observed
data) against the null hypothesis using some statistics.
We use statistics to evaluate our hypotheses.
We refer to them as test statistics.
For a statistic to be considered as a test statistic, its
sampling distribution must be fully known (exactly or
approximately) under the null hypothesis.
We refer to the distribution of test statistics under the null
hypothesis as the null distribution.
CONCEPTS OF HYPOTHESIS TESTING
The two possible decisions that can be made:

Conclude that there is enough evidence to support the

alternative hypothesis
(also stated as: reject the null hypothesis in favor of
the alternative)

Conclude that there is not enough evidence to support

the alternative hypothesis
(also stated as: failing to reject the null hypothesis in favor
of the alternative)
NOTE: we do not say that we accept the null hypothesis
if a statistician is around…
 One-sided vs. two-sided hypothesis testing

The alternative hypothesis HA : µ < 98.6 or HA : µ >

98.6 are called one-sided alternatives.
In contrast, the alternative hypothesis
HA : µ ≠ 98.6 is two-sided.
For the above three alternatives, the null hypothesis
is the same, H0 : µ = 98.6