Organizations sometimes want to go beyond describing the data and actually perform some type of inference on the data. Hypothesis testing is a statistical technique that is used to help make inferences about a population parameter. Hypothesis testing allows you to test whether a claim about a parameter is accurate or not.
Your boss makes the claim that the average body fat in men attending Silver's Gym is 20%. You believe that the average body fat for men attending Silver's Gym is not 20%. For claims such as this, you can set up a hypothesis test to reach one of two possible conclusions: either a decision cannot be made to disprove the body fat average of 20%, or there is enough evidence to say that the body fat average claim is inaccurate.
To assist in your analysis for Silver's Gym, consider the following steps based on your boss's claim that the mean body fat in men attending Silver's Gym is 20%:
- First, construct the null and alternative hypothesis test based on the claim by your boss.
- Using an alpha level of 0.05, perform a hypothesis test, and report your findings. Be sure to discuss which test you will be using and the reason for selection.Recall you found the body fat mean and standard deviation in Part I of the task.
- Based on your results, interpret the final decision to report to your boss.