PSY 250 Lecture Notes - Lecture 41: Null Hypothesis, Alternative Hypothesis, Test Statistic
Document Summary
Used to test between null and alternative hypotheses. Values where reject the null in favor of the alternative hypothesis. Students attempting to increase memory, wish to compare caffeine with no caffeine. Runs a small trial where some students drink coffee, and others do not. When do we reject the null hypothesis and decided to tentatively accept the alternative hypothesis. When the probability of the null being true is very, very small. Result would be very unlikely if the null was true. Set a significance level (also called an alpha level) to decide when to reject the null. Depends on the importance and relevancy of research. Test statistic falls in some interval which support alternative hypothesis. Measure of the strength of evidence the sample data provides against the null hypothesis. We say that the groups were not significantly different, not that they are the same.
