10.3 Take-Home Points

• We use a statistical test if we want to decide on a null hypothesis: reject or not reject?

• The decision rules should be specified beforehand: Decide on the direction of the test (one-sided or two-sided) and the significance level.

• The null and alternative hypotheses always concern a population statistic. Together they cover all possible outcomes for the statistic. The null hypothesis always specifies one (boundary) value for the population statistic.

• We reject the null hypothesis if a test is statistically significant. This means that the probability of drawing a sample with the current or a more extreme outcome (even more inconsistent with the null hypothesis) if the null hypothesis is true (conditional probability) is below the significance level.

• A statistically significant test does not prove that the null hypothesis is false. We can make a Type I error: rejecting a true null hypothesis.

• The 95% confidence interval includes all null hypotheses that would not be rejected by our current sample in a two-sided test at five per cent significance level. It contains the population values that are not sufficiently contradicted by the sample data.

• The calculated p value is only correct if the data is used for no more than one null hypothesis test and the null hypothesis was formulated beforehand.

• If the same data is used for more null hypotheses tests, the probability of a Type I error increases. We obtain too many significant results, which is called capitalization on chance.