16. How Do We Choose Between Hypotheses?

How Do We Choose Between Hypotheses?

In order to put this idea to practice, let's do an example. Follow along with the screencast below to see how this works. The video says the average height of coffee drinkers, but it is actually the average height of all individuals in the coffee dataset - some who drink coffee, but some who do not drink coffee.

After you work through the screencast, there is walk through of a second method we might use to choose between the competing hypotheses on the next concept. In this second screencast, you will use the common logic used in hypothesis testing. The video below uses the logic you gained in the earlier confidence interval lesson.

Using A Confidence Interval to Make A Decision

Notice the variable upper is the same as the variable high in the video .

Using your confidence interval, you can simply look at if the interval falls in the null hypothesis space or in the alternative hypothesis space to choose which hypothesis you believe to be true.

In the above case, our interval was entirely below 70, which would suggest the null (the population mean is less than 70) is actually true.