Statistics
Activity:
Meaning of Alpha
Posted on Feb 18, 2010
Topic: Hypothesis Testing
Students recognize that the alpha-value (significance level of a test) is the relative frequency for sample statistic values that lead to a “reject the null” conclusion, given that the null hypothesis is actually true.
Downloads
Select Teacher or Student files from the drop down menu. Click on the file type you want to download.
Downloaded: 2561
Activity Key Steps:
Visit MathNspired.com for additional Action Consequence activities and information.
Students generate a sample and sample mean and predict whether the sample might reasonably have come from the hypothsized population, considering the criteria they would use to make a decision. They generate additional samples of the same size from the hypothesized population and observe where the means of these samples fall.
Students consider a fixed alpha level (0.1) and predict the likelihood of getting by chance an outcome at least as extreme as the value determining the border of the rejection region if the null hypothesis is true. They then generate 100 samples and observe how many fall into the rejection region.
By changing the alpha value for a distribution of 100 sample means for a given sample size, they observe that the decision to reject or not to reject the null hypothesis will change depending on alpha.