Question 1157251: Please help me formulate the null(Ho) and Alternative(Ha) Hypothesis and identify if the hypothesis test is left -, right- or non-directional
A doctor wants to know if the average recovery time of a patient taking a particular medication is one month
Answer by Theo(13342)   (Show Source):
You can put this solution on YOUR website! as far as i remember, the null hypothesis is the one that it is assumed to be.
the alternate hypothesis is telling you that it is not what it is supposed to be, i.e. it's not equal to one month.
since you are looking for equal ot not equal, then you would have a non-directional test, i.e. it could be higher or it could be lower by a significant margin that you determine before making the test.
that's the confidence interval.
normally you would use 95% or 99% or 90% or something in that range, but it doesn't have to be.
you would then take a sample and you would find the mean of the sample and the standard deviation of the sample if you don't have the standard deviation of the population.
the mean of the population is assumed to be one month.
you find the mean of the sample.
you find the standard deviation of the distribution of sample means, which is called the standard error.
this standard error depends on the size of the sample.
but, i'm getting too deep for what you asked, so i'll stop here.
for what you asked, the answer is:
the null hypothesis assumes the mean is one month.
the alternate hypothesis tests to see is the sample mean is within the confidence limits.
if it is, then the null hypothesis is, then the null hypothesis is accepted.
if it isn't, then the hull hypothesis is rejected.
a two tail test is required because your test is equal or not equal.
if your test was more than, or less than, the null value, then a one tailed test would be used, left for less and right for more.
here's a reference that discusses some of the issues you are asking about.
https://www3.nd.edu/~rwilliam/stats1/x24.pdf
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