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| Math Central | Quandaries & Queries |
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Question from dani, a parent: A poll of 1068 American voters indicated that 48% supported te Democratic candidate for presidency. At the 0.05 level of significance, test the claim that less than 50% of American voters preferred the Democratic candidate. a. State the null hypothesis |
Hi Dani,
I can help you get started with this problem. This is a question about the proportion of American voters who preferred the Democratic party at the time the poll was taken. I am going to call this proportion p. The instructions say "test the claim that less than 50% of American voters preferred the Democratic candidate" or, stated using the proportion p, "test the claim that p < 0.5". Hence the hypothesis test is to choose between two alternatives:
p < 0.5 and
p ≥ 0.5
The null hypothesis is always the alternative that contains the equal sign and hence the answer to a. is p ≥ 0.5 and the answer to b. is p < 0.5 .
I hope this helps,
Penny
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