Math 200

95%
= 0.025
2

Hypothesis Testing Project

The objective of this assignment is to use methods we have studied in hypothesis testing to test an
assertion you have found in printed media. After identifying a printed claim about a population you will
design and conduct a survey to challenge (or fail to challenge) the claim.
Your (typed) project should be conducted as follows:
Find an article in a newspaper, magazine or on the internet which makes a claim about ONE
population mean or ONE population proportion. The claim may be based upon a survey that the
article was reporting on. Decide whether this claim is the null or alternate hypothesis.
Copy or print out the article and include a copy in your project, along with the source.
State how you will collect your data. (Convenience sampling is not acceptable.)
Conduct your survey. You must have more than 50 responses in your sample. When you hand in
your final project, attach a copy of the question(s) asked and the tally sheet or the packet of
questionnaires that you used to collect data. Your data must be real.
State the statistics that are a result of your data collection: sample size, sample mean, and sample
standard deviation, OR sample size and number of successes.
Record the hypothesis test (as we have done in class - use the Solution Sheet attached or in the
appendices as a guide), based on your experiment. Do a DRAFT solution first and check it over
carefully. Have a classmate check your solution to see if it is done correctly. Make your decision
using a 5% level of significance. Include a 95% confidence interval with your results.
Create a graph that illustrates your data. This may be a pie or bar chart or may be a histogram or
box plot, depending on the nature of your data. Produce a graph that makes sense for your data and
gives useful visual information about your data. You may need to look at several types of graphs
before you decide which is the most appropriate for the type of data in your project.
Write your summary (in complete sentences and paragraphs, with proper grammar and correct
spelling) that describes the project. The summary MUST include:
A brief discussion of the article, including the source.
A statement of the claim made in the article (one of the hypotheses).
A detailed description of how, where, and when you collected the data, including the sampling
technique. Did you use cluster, stratified, systematic, or simple random sampling (using a
random number generator)? As stated above, convenience sampling is not acceptable.
The conclusion about the article claim in light of your hypothesis test. This is the conclusion of
your hypothesis test, stated in words, in the context of the situation in your project in sentence
form, as if you were writing this conclusion for a non-statistician.
A sentence interpreting your confidence interval in the context of the situation in your project.

Grading Guide:

)
Copy of Printed Claim: 2 pts
1. Inclusions

: 7 pts
Survey Results: 5 pts

2. Analysis

Sample Statistics: 3 pts

Hypothesis Test Details (Solutions pg. a i): 8 pts

Graph of Data: 3 pts

: 14 pts

3. Summary

Discusses Article: 1 pt

Statement of claim: 1 pt

Describes Data Collection: 3 pts

Conclusion: 2 pts

Interprets CI: 2 pts

: 9 pts

Total:

/30

638

APPENDIX

14.5 Solution Sheets

14.5.1 Solution Sheet: Hypothesis Testing for Single Mean and Single Proportion9
Class Time:
Name:
a. Ho :
b. Ha :
c. In words, CLEARLY state what your random variable X or P represents.
d. State the distribution to use for the test.
e. What is the test statistic?
f. What is the p-value? In 1 2 complete sentences, explain what the p-value means for this problem.
g. Use the previous information to sketch a picture of this situation. CLEARLY, label and scale the horizontal axis and shade the region(s) corresponding to the p-value.

Figure 14.1

h. Indicate the correct decision (reject or do not reject the null hypothesis), the reason for it, and write
an appropriate conclusion, using complete sentences.
i. Alpha:
ii. Decision:
iii. Reason for decision:
iv. Conclusion:
i. Construct a 95% Confidence Interval for the true mean or proportion. Include a sketch of the graph of
the situation. Label the point estimate and the lower and upper bounds of the Confidence Interval.

Figure 14.2

9 This

content is available online at <http://cnx.org/content/m17134/1.6/>.