POLS 3650 Lecture 13: Hypotheses Testing

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLS 3650
• Professor: Edward Koning

Document Summary

Whenever we use a sample to generalize about a population, we need to exclude the possibility that out findings are the product of sampling error. If our sample is random, then the sampling error with be random as well. This means we can use the insight of the clt to calculate the probability that our findings were produced entirely by chance. If we feel we can safely exclude that possibility, we call our findings statistically significant. We express statistical significance as the probability (p) that we would reach the same conclusions under the condition of randomness. It is not the probability that the findings are the result of randomness. It is not an indicator of how large or important our findings are. Alternative hypothesis (h1) = the expectation we want to investigate, the research hypothesis. Null hypothesis (h0) = there is no effect, no difference, no significant finding.