9. Hypothesis Testing for One Sample

A popular theme park claims that their weekly attendance is around $100,000$. You believe that the weekly attendance is different than this claimed value, so you gather sample data. Write the null and alternative hypotheses.

A candy manufacturer seeking to minimize the variation in weights of their candies claims to produce candies with a standard deviation less than $0.300$ g. Write the null and alternative hypotheses.

A survey claimed that $30\%$ of adults prefer electric cars over traditional cars. A car manufacturer believes the true proportion is higher than $30\%$. To test this, they survey a random sample of $50$ adults and find that $19$ say they prefer electric cars. Determine which test statistic to use & calculate it.

Determine whether the hypothesis test is left-tailed, right-tailed, or two-tailed.

$H_0:$ $p=0.4$

$H_a:$ $p\ne 0.4$

Stem Cell Survey In a Newsweek poll of 882 adults, 481 (or 55%) said that they were in favor of using federal tax money to fund medical research using stem cells obtained from human embryos. A politician claims that people don’t really understand the stem cell issue and their responses to such questions are random responses equivalent to a coin toss. Use the following probabilities related to determining whether the result of 481 is significantly high (assuming the true rate is 50%). Is 481 significantly high? What should be concluded about the politician’s claim? Explain.

P(respondent says to use the federal tax money) = 0.5

P(among 882, exactly 481 says to use federal tax money) = 0.000713

P(among 882,481 or more say to use federal tax money) = 0.00389

Final Conclusions

In Exercises 21–24, use a significance level of α = 0.05 and use the given information for the following:

State a conclusion about the null hypothesis. (Reject H0 or fail to reject H0.)

Without using technical terms or symbols, state a final conclusion that addresses the original claim.

Original claim: The mean pulse rate (in beats per minute) of adult males is 72 bpm. The hypothesis test results in a P-value of 0.0095.

Interpreting Power Chantix (varenicline) tablets are used as an aid to help people stop smoking. In a clinical trial, 129 subjects were treated with Chantix twice a day for 12 weeks, and 16 subjects experienced abdominal pain (based on data from Pfizer, Inc.). If someone claims that more than 8% of Chantix users experience abdominal pain, that claim is supported with a hypothesis test conducted with a 0.05 significance level. Using 0.18 as an alternative value of p, the power of the test is 0.96. Interpret this value of the power of the test.

Identifying H0 and H1

In Exercises 5–8, do the following:

a. Express the original claim in symbolic form.

b. Identify the null and alternative hypotheses.

Light Year Claim: Most adults know that a light year is a measure of distance. Sample data: A Pew Research Center survey of 3278 adults showed that 72% knew that a light year is a measure of distance.