Dr.

Sukhmeet Kaur
What is hypothesis
Hypo + Thesis = Hypothesis.
‘Hypo’ means tentative or subject to the verification and
‘Thesis’ means statement about solution of a problem.

= is a tentative statement about the solution of the problem.

OR
“A hypothesis is a statement or assertion about the population characteristics”.

Scientific Hypothesis
Statistical Hypothesis
Statistical Hypothesis (3 Conditions)

A Group of Elements
Population having similar
Characteristics

Subset of Population Sample

Verify the The Variables

Hypothesis (IV/DV)
Examples
•The population of all workers working in the sugar factory.
•The population of motorcycles produced by a particular company.
•The population of mosquitoes in a town.
•The population of tax payers in India

Meaning Population refers to the Sample means a subgroup of

collection of all elements the members of population
possessing common chosen for participation in
characteristics, that the study.
comprises universe.

Includes Each and every unit of Only a handful of units of

the group. population.

Characteristic Parameter Statistic

Data collection Complete enumeration or Sample survey or sampling

census

Focus on Identifying the Making inferences about

characteristics. population.
A hypothesis states your predictions about what your research will find. It is a tentative
answer to your research question that has not yet been tested.

A hypothesis is not just a guess — it should be based on existing theories and

knowledge. It also has to be testable, which means you can support or refute it through
scientific methods (such as experiments, observations and statistical analysis of data).

What makes a great Hypothesis ?

Hypothesis should always:

1. Contain an Independent and Dependent Variables
2. Tested
3. Measurable
4. Be clear and Understandable
5. Explain what you expect to happen
Three ways to phrase a hypothesis
• Simple prediction in if…then form.
The first part of the sentence states the independent variable and the second part states the
dependent variable.
If a first-year student starts attending more lectures, then their exam scores will improve
• Correlations or effects, where you directly state the predicted relationship between variables.

The number of lectures attended by first-year students has a positive effect on their exam
scores.
• If you are comparing two groups, the hypothesis can state what difference you expect to find
between them.

First-year students who attended most lectures will have better exam scores than those who
attended few lectures.
Formulating Hypothesis
The null hypothesis is the proposition that there is no effect or no relationship between
phenomena or populations.
Null (invalid/Zero) : Denoted by Ho

Alternative Hypothesis is the proposition that there is a effect or relationship between

phenomena or populations.
Alternative/ Research : Denoted by H1 or Ha

Null hypothesis is developed to test the alternative hypothesis. To test the alternative hypothesis,
the null hypothesis is assumed to be true. The null hypothesis is made for rejection.
Evidence The null hypothesis is rejected. Therefore alternative hypothesis accepted.
No Evidence
we fail to reject Null hypothesis due to not enough evidence. Therefore alternative hypothesis is
not accepted.
Proof by Contradiction
Answers:

H0: The number of lectures attended by first-year students has no effect on

their final exam scores.

H1: The number of lectures attended by first-year students has a positive effect
on their final exam scores
• Main idea: Reject the null hypothesis in favor of the alternative only with
convincing/significant evidence.
• We do NOT say that we accept the alternative, only that we have significant evidence to
reject the null. This is because we could have made a mistake.
Exercises
Try setting up some hypotheses on your own, and be sure to define your parameters:

For the new nearly infamous soda bottle example, the company claims that there are 20 oz.
per bottle. You (a consumer) will sue if there is less than 20 oz. on average per bottle. What
hypotheses should you test?

You are interested in whether a proposal related to environmental conservation will be voted
into law by a majority vote at the next election. What hypotheses should you test?
Significance Level
Level of Significance ( α) is the probability of
rejecting the null hypothesis Ho. The level of
significance (alpha) is the area in the critical
region. That is, the area in the tails to the right
or left of the critical values. The values always
expressed in fraction such as 0.05 or 0.01.

Rejection Region
Rejection Region is known as critical region.
The size of the rejection region is determined
by the level of significance (α) i.e. how much
error an investigator can tolerate in wrongly
rejecting the null hypothesis.

Confidence Level
Confidence level : 95 % or 99 % i.e. .95 or .90
The confidence level is equivalent to 1 – the
alpha level. So, if your significance level is
0.05, the corresponding confidence level is
95%
Any Normal Distribution
• Bell-shaped
• Symmetric about mean
• Continuous
• Never touches the x-axis
• Total area under curve is 1.00
• Approximately 68% lies within 1 standard deviation of the mean, 95% within 2 standard
deviations, and 99.7% within 3 standard deviations of the mean. This is the Empirical
Rule mentioned earlier.
• Data values represented by x which has mean mu and standard deviation sigma.
Hypothesis Testing Approach

• Critical Value Approach

• P-Value Approach
 Critical Value Approach
A critical value is a point (or points) on the scale of the test statistic
beyond which we reject the null hypothesis, and, is derived from the
level of significance α of the test. Critical value can tell us, what is the
probability of two sample means belonging to the same distribution.
Higher, the critical value means lower the probability of two samples
belonging to same distribution. The general critical value for a two-
tailed test is 1.96, which is based on the fact that 95% of the area of a
normal distribution is within 1.96 standard deviations of the mean
In a two-sided test the null hypothesis is rejected if the test statistic is either too small or too large. Thus the rejection region for such a test
consists of two parts: one on the left and one on the right.
For a left-tailed test, the null hypothesis is rejected if the test statistic is too small. Thus,
the rejection region for such a test consists of one part, which is left from the center.
For a right-tailed test, the null hypothesis is rejected if the test statistic is too large. Thus, the
rejection region for such a test consists of one part, which is right from the center.
The p-value approach

• The p-value corresponds to the probability of observing sample data at least as extreme as the actually obtained test
statistic. Small p-values provide evidence against the null hypothesis. The smaller (closer to 0) the p-value, the
stronger is the evidence against the null hypothesis.
• Thus, the p-value is commonly used to evaluate the strength of the evidence against the null hypothesis without
reference to significance level.
• A p-value higher than 0.05 (> 0.05) is not statistically significant and indicates weak evidence against the null
hypothesis.
• A p-value less than 0.05 (typically ≤ 0.05) is statistically significant. It indicates strong evidence against the null
hypothesis, as there is less than a 5% probability the null is correct.

Note:
• Do not use 0 before the decimal point for the statistical values p as it cannot equal 1, in other words, write p = .
001 instead of p = 0.001.
• Please pay attention to issues of italics (p is always italicized) and spacing (either side of the = sign).
• p = .000 (as outputted by some statistical packages such as SPSS) is impossible and should be written as p < .001.
• “When reporting p values, report exact p values (e.g., p = .031) to two or three decimal places. However,
report p values less than .001 as p < .001. The tradition of reporting p values in the form p < .10, p < .05, p < .01,
and so forth