Quote:
Originally Posted by heikstheo
Can you show a specific example of how null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis work? Pretend, for example, that you're submitting a proposal for a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation in psychology. Perhaps the example might have something to do with the psychology of rehabilitation and punishment. Note: Assume that you're trying to explain your thesis/dissertation to somebody reasonably intelligent who doesn't have much psychology background beyond a required freshman course.
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Quote:
For example, one may want to compare the test scores of two random samples of men and women, and ask whether or not one group (population) has a mean score (which really is) different from the other. A null hypothesis would be that the mean score of the male population was the same as the mean score of the female population:
H0 : μ1 = μ2
where:
H0 = the null hypothesis
μ1 = the mean of population 1, and
μ2 = the mean of population 2.
Alternatively, the null hypothesis can postulate (suggest) that the two samples are drawn from the same population, so that the variance and shape of the distributions are equal, as well as the means.
Formulation of the null hypothesis is a vital step in testing statistical significance. One can then establish the probability of observing the obtained data (or data more different from the prediction of the null hypothesis) if the null hypothesis is true. That probability is what is commonly called the "significance level" of the results.
That is, in scientific experimental design, we may predict that a particular factor will produce an effect on our dependent variable — this is our alternative hypothesis. We then consider how often we would expect to observe our experimental results, or results even more extreme, if we were to take many samples from a population where there was no effect (i.e. we test against our null hypothesis). If we find that this happens rarely (up to, say, 5% of the time), we can conclude that our results support our experimental prediction — we reject our null hypothesis.
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if you don't know what a null hypothesis is, then i cannot explain it in a few posts. i already outlined the basics of it.
btw, null hypothesis is a statistical term. There are other terms in logic, but logical terminology and thinking ways are really hard to explain if you don't know the script. you will get things like this:
and
Logic might be more appropriate then statistics, but understandable, they are not.
08-06-2008, 01:19 AM
I'm a Tarte, What! You want some of this?
BTW debates are about soundbites and not the facts, so i hardly think this is true. Ever seen obama or mccain debate and while quoting facts saying from wich source and page it's from? never seen that.
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