Suppose you want to test the claim that a population mean equals 41.

(a) State the null hypothesis.

(b) State the alternate hypothesis if you have no information regarding how the population mean might differ from 41.

(c) State the alternative hypothesis if you believe (based on experience or past studies) that the population mean may exceed 41.

(d) State the alternative hypothesis if you believe (based on experience or past studies) that the population mean may be less than 41.

Step 1

(a) State the null hypothesis.

Our first step is to establish a working hypothesis about the population parameter in question. This hypothesis is called the null hypothesis, H₀.

Here the population parameter in question is the mean. The statement that is under investigation is that this mean is equal to . Therefore, we have the following null hypothesis.

H₀:

41