The goal of hypothesis testing
Put simply, the goal of hypothesis testing is to decide whether the data we have is sufficient to support a particular hypothesis. The hypothesis test provides a formal framework for testing a hypothesis based on our data rather than attempting to decide based on visual inspection. In this section, we will discuss the process of hypothesis testing. In the next section, Basics of the z-test – the z-score, z-statistic, critical values, and p-values, we will put the process to work by walking through an example in detail with the z-test.
Overview of a hypothesis test for the mean
To understand the hypothesis testing process, let’s start with a simple example. Suppose we have a factory with machines that produce widgets, and we expect our machines to produce widgets at a certain rate (30 widgets per hour). We start by constructing two hypotheses, the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis. The null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis...
