Pedagogical issues in hypothesis testing

Hypothesis testing is a statistical technique which is used to evaluate assumptions about a population on the basis of sample data, to determine the extent to which they are tenable. Hypothesis testing is the most widely-applied statistical technique, particularly because of the emphasis on hypothes...

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Main Author: Mihir Dash
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2018
Online Access:http://journalarticle.ukm.my/12144/
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/12144/1/17850-76579-1-PB.pdf
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author Mihir Dash,
author_facet Mihir Dash,
author_sort Mihir Dash,
building UKM Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Hypothesis testing is a statistical technique which is used to evaluate assumptions about a population on the basis of sample data, to determine the extent to which they are tenable. Hypothesis testing is the most widely-applied statistical technique, particularly because of the emphasis on hypothesis development and testing in the scientific method. Unfortunately, students and researchers are quite prone to making mistakes and misinterpreting inferences in hypothesis testing. These mistakes and misinterpretations tend to arise from insufficient understanding of the probability and sampling theory underlying the logic of hypothesis testing. The present study attempts to identify the causes of different types of mistakes made in hypothesis testing, in order to suggest pedagogical strategies to avoid these mistakes. The data for the study was collected from a sample of postgraduate management students in Bangalore, India, using specially-designed business decision-making case lets based on hypothesis testing. The analysis focuses on the incidence of different types of mistakes that the respondents committed, particularly with respect to the type of tests, and uses multiple linear discriminant analysis to identify the factors impacting the overall inference, i.e. the correct taking of the decision and the correct drawing of the conclusion. The key finding of the study is that both the formulation and computation factors play a significant role in taking the overall inference. Further, in each panel, the critical discriminator was found to be the aspect for which the incidence of mistakes was highest. With increasing complexity of the hypothesis test, the computation factor was found to become more important. In panels A and B (tests for a single population mean and proportion, respectively), formulation aspects were found to be the most significant discriminators, and in panel C (test for equality of means), both formulation and computation aspects were significant; on the other hand, for the remaining panels (test for independence, one-way ANOVA, and two-way ANOVA), only computation aspects were significant. The study contributes to the literature by proposing some pedagogical strategies for teaching of different types of hypothesis tests based on the findings.
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spelling oai:generic.eprints.org:121442018-09-29T00:54:40Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/12144/ Pedagogical issues in hypothesis testing Mihir Dash, Hypothesis testing is a statistical technique which is used to evaluate assumptions about a population on the basis of sample data, to determine the extent to which they are tenable. Hypothesis testing is the most widely-applied statistical technique, particularly because of the emphasis on hypothesis development and testing in the scientific method. Unfortunately, students and researchers are quite prone to making mistakes and misinterpreting inferences in hypothesis testing. These mistakes and misinterpretations tend to arise from insufficient understanding of the probability and sampling theory underlying the logic of hypothesis testing. The present study attempts to identify the causes of different types of mistakes made in hypothesis testing, in order to suggest pedagogical strategies to avoid these mistakes. The data for the study was collected from a sample of postgraduate management students in Bangalore, India, using specially-designed business decision-making case lets based on hypothesis testing. The analysis focuses on the incidence of different types of mistakes that the respondents committed, particularly with respect to the type of tests, and uses multiple linear discriminant analysis to identify the factors impacting the overall inference, i.e. the correct taking of the decision and the correct drawing of the conclusion. The key finding of the study is that both the formulation and computation factors play a significant role in taking the overall inference. Further, in each panel, the critical discriminator was found to be the aspect for which the incidence of mistakes was highest. With increasing complexity of the hypothesis test, the computation factor was found to become more important. In panels A and B (tests for a single population mean and proportion, respectively), formulation aspects were found to be the most significant discriminators, and in panel C (test for equality of means), both formulation and computation aspects were significant; on the other hand, for the remaining panels (test for independence, one-way ANOVA, and two-way ANOVA), only computation aspects were significant. The study contributes to the literature by proposing some pedagogical strategies for teaching of different types of hypothesis tests based on the findings. Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2018-05 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/12144/1/17850-76579-1-PB.pdf Mihir Dash, (2018) Pedagogical issues in hypothesis testing. Jurnal Pendidikan Malaysia, 43 (1). pp. 25-33. ISSN 0126-6020 / 2180-0782 http://ejournal.ukm.my/jpend/issue/view/1089
spellingShingle Mihir Dash,
Pedagogical issues in hypothesis testing
title Pedagogical issues in hypothesis testing
title_full Pedagogical issues in hypothesis testing
title_fullStr Pedagogical issues in hypothesis testing
title_full_unstemmed Pedagogical issues in hypothesis testing
title_short Pedagogical issues in hypothesis testing
title_sort pedagogical issues in hypothesis testing
url http://journalarticle.ukm.my/12144/
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/12144/
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/12144/1/17850-76579-1-PB.pdf