A Non-Technical Introduction to Hypothesis Testing
It's likely that you've had the need to run a hypothesis test at some point, whether you've been aware of it or not. This happens when you have some kind of "numerical claim" (or "hypothesis") that you want to make, and you'd like to determine the validity of this claim by collecting some relevant data. You may be tempted to just look at the data and immediately draw a conclusion, but sometimes your intuition will be wrong if you only rely on a quick glance at the data. This is where the idea of a hypothesis test comes into play. Even though hypothesis testing is a very technical topic in statistics, it can still be explained at a high level - that is, without all the mathematical details. Let's now jump into the steps of a hypothesis test, while giving an example of what a test may look like: Conducting a hypothesis test in 3 simple steps: When you have some kind of claim (or hypothesis) that you'd like to assess, it's important to firs...