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Suppose you are testing someone to see whether she or he can tell Coke from Pepsi, and you are using 20 trials, half with Coke and half with Pepsi. The null hypothesis is that the person is guessing. a. About how many should you expect the person to get right under the null hypothesis that the person is guessing? b. Suppose person A gets 13 right out of 20 , and person B gets 18 right out of 20 . Which will have a smaller \(\mathrm{p}\) -value, and why?

Short Answer

Expert verified
Expected right answers under the null hypothesis would be 10. Person B will have a smaller p-value because getting 18 out of 20 right is less likely under the assumption of random guessing than getting 13 right.

Step by step solution

01

Calculate Expected correct guesses

Assuming the person is merely guessing, they have only two options, Coke or Pepsi, and hence a 50% chance to get each trial right. Therefore, with 20 trials, the expected number of correct guesses would be \(0.5 * 20 = 10\).
02

Compare p-values

The lower a p-value, the less likely it is that the observed data could have occurred under the null hypothesis. Therefore, guessing 18 out of 20 correctly is less likely to happen by chance than guessing 13 out of 20, which means person B, who guessed 18 correctly, will have a smaller p-value.

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Key Concepts

These are the key concepts you need to understand to accurately answer the question.

Statistical Significance
The concept of statistical significance plays a vital role in hypothesis testing where it helps to determine if the evidence from the data is strong enough to reject the null hypothesis. This basically answers the question: 'Is the observed effect real, or is it just due to random chance?'

When evaluating the results of a test, like the one where a person tries to distinguish Coke from Pepsi, researchers look for a statistically significant difference between the expected outcomes under the null hypothesis and the actual results. For instance, statistically significant results in this scenario would suggest that the person is likely not just guessing but can genuinely distinguish between the two sodas. The level of significance is often set at a threshold such as 0.05, meaning there's only a 5% probability that the observed results happened by random chance.
P-Value
The p-value is a statistical measure that helps researchers to decide whether their results are within the normal range of variation expected under the null hypothesis. It's the probability of obtaining the observed data, or something more extreme, if the null hypothesis is true.

In the context of our Coke vs. Pepsi experiment, the p-value indicates how likely it is that a person's correct guesses are due to chance. The lower the p-value, the stronger the evidence against the null hypothesis. Person A, with a score of 13 out of 20, will have a higher p-value than person B, who scored 18 out of 20. This is because getting 18 correct is less probable if one were merely guessing, leading us to believe that there's a lower chance of it happening by random chance.
Probability
Probability is the likelihood of an event occurring and is expressed as a number between 0 and 1, with 0 indicating impossibility and 1 indicating certainty.

In hypothesis testing, we're often asking how probable it is that we would observe the experimental results under the assumption that the null hypothesis is true. Let's say the person being tested is truly just guessing — this means there's a 50% chance, or probability of 0.5, that they'll get each trial right. Over 20 trials, the probability helps us calculate the expected number of correct guesses, which we've determined to be 10. Probabilities are core to computing p-values and assessing the statistical significance of our results.
Hypothesis Testing
Hypothesis testing is a systematic procedure used in statistics to evaluate claims about a population based on a sample. The starting point is formulating two competing hypotheses: the null hypothesis (usually a statement of 'no effect' or 'no difference') and the alternative hypothesis (which suggests a new effect or difference).

In our example, the null hypothesis is that the person cannot tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi and is thus guessing. Through hypothesis testing, which includes calculating p-values and assessing statistical significance, we can decide whether the evidence is strong enough to reject the null hypothesis in favor of the alternative hypothesis that the person has the ability to distinguish between the sodas.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

In each case. choose whether the appropriate test is a one-proportion \(z\) -test or a two-proportion z-test. Name the population(s). a. A researcher takes a random sample of 4 -year-olds to find out whether girls or boys are more likely to know the alphabet. b. A pollster takes a random sample of all U.S. adult voters to see whether more than \(50 \%\) approve of the performance of the current U.S. president. c. A researcher wants to know whether a new heart medicine reduces the rate of heart attacks compared to an old medicine. d. A pollster takes a poll in Wyoming about homeschooling to find out whether the approval rate for men is equal to the approval rate for women. e. A person is studied to see whether he or she can predict the results of coin flips better than chance alone.

A magazine advertisement claims that wearing a magnetized bracelet will reduce arthritis pain in those who suffer from arthritis. A medical researcher tests this claim with 233 arthritis sufferers randomly assigned either to wear a magnetized bracelet or to wear a placebo bracelet. The researcher records the proportion of each group who report relief from arthritis pain after 6 weeks. After analyzing the data, he fails to reject the null hypothesis. Which of the following are valid interpretations of his findings? There may be more than one correct answer. a. The magnetized bracelets are not effective at reducing arthritis pain. b. There's insufficient evidence that the magnetized bracelets are effective at reducing arthritis pain. c. The magnetized bracelets had exactly the same effect as the placebo in reducing arthritis pain. d. There were no statistically significant differences between the magnetized bracelets and the placebos in reducing arthritis pain.

St. Louis County is \(24 \%\) African American. Suppose you are looking at jury pools, each with 200 members, in St. Louis County. The null hypothesis is that the probability of an African American being selected into the jury pool is \(24 \%\). a. How many African Americans would you expect on a jury pool of 200 people if the null hypothesis is true? b. Suppose pool A contains 40 African American people out of 200 , and pool B contains 26 African American people out of 200 . Which will have a smaller p-value and why?

Suppose a poll is taken that shows 220 out of 400 randomly selected Twitter users feel that Twitter should do more to decrease hateful and abusive content on the site. Test the hypothesis that the majority (more than \(50 \%\) ) of Twitter users feel the site should do more to decrease hateful and abusive content on the site. Use a significance level of \(0.01\).

If we reject the null hypothesis, can we claim to have proved that the null hypothesis is false? Why or why not?

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