hypothesis test for mean

In these situations we must begin by an “a priori” assumption of the mean value of the population, μ. Then we use , the sample mean, which is calculated by obtaining a random sample from the population, to decide whether this assumption about μ is likely. We must follow the steps outlined for hypothesis testing:

 

Example: A survey of 64 professionals working for an institution revealed that the mean time of employment in that field was 5 years, with a standard deviation of 4. Considering a significance level of 0.05, do these data support the fact that the mean time of employment of these professionals is below 6 years? We assume that professional population is normally distributed.
 
Step 1: H0: μ ≥ 6; H1: μ < 6. The sample data make us infer that the mean time of employment is less than 6 years, which marks the direction of the test
 
Step 2: This is a one-tailed test with α = 0.05, then the critical value zα = -1.645, which separates the rejection and non-rejection regions. The acceptance interval is: I = (5.1775,+∞)
 
Step 3: The sampling distribution of reference is set to normal. Then, we calculate the value of z corresponding to the distribution N(0,1)
 

Step 4:
 

Then, the mean time of employment is lower than 6 years

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