Sometimes experiments involving success or failure responses are run in a
paired or before/after manner. Suppose that before a major policy speech by a
political candidate, \(n\) individuals are selected and asked whether \((S)\) or
not \((F)\) they favor the candidate. Then after the speech the same \(n\) people
are asked the same question. The responses can be entered in a table as
follows:
After
\(S \quad F\)
where \(x_{1}+x_{2}+x_{3}+x_{4}=n\). Let \(p_{1}, p_{2}, p_{3}\), and \(p_{4}\)
denote the four cell probabilities, so that \(p_{1}=P(S\) before and \(S\) after),
and so on. We wish to test the hypothesis that the true proportion of
supporters \((S)\) after the speech has not increased against the alternative
that it has increased.
a. State the two hypotheses of interest in terms of \(p_{1}, p_{2}, p_{3}\), and
\(p_{4}\).
b. Construct an estimator for the after/before difference in success
probabilities.
c. When \(n\) is large, it can be shown that the rv \(\left(X_{f}-X_{j}\right) /
n\) has approximately a normal distribution with variance given by
\(\left[p_{i}+p_{j}-\left(p_{j}-p_{j}\right)^{2}\right] / n\). Use this to
construct a test statistic with approximately a standard normal distribution
when \(H_{0}\) is true (the result is called McNemar's test).
d. If \(x_{1}=350, \quad x_{2}=150, \quad x_{3}=200\), and \(x_{4}=300\), what do
you conclude?