MTH 156 Hypothesis testing: Null and Alternative Hypothesis Discussion
Mathematics
Share with your peers the null and alternative hypotheses for a decision that is relevant to your personal or professional life. Remember in hypothesis testing the “equals” part will be with the null hypothesis, so you can have less than or equal to, greater than or equal to, or just equal to when defining the null hypothesis. The alternative hypothesis will be, then, either greater than, less than, or not equal to in relation to the above null criteria. See below for how it looks symbolically for the three possible setups.
I. H0: μ ≥ μ0 Ha: μ < μ0
II. H0: μ ≤ μ0 Ha: μ > μ0
III. H0: μ = μ0 Ha: μ ≠ μ0
Note that a hypothesis test needs to be set up to be testable, so be sure to have it presented in a manner where you are testing the μ0 value. Additionally, identify the Type I and Type II errors that could occur with your decision‐making process.
