Answer :
Final answer:
In the context of hypothesis testing, the null hypothesis is the statement that the researcher seeks to find evidence against. Hence, for the given scenario, the null hypothesis would be option (a), that the mean credit card balance for undergraduate students is $3,173. After a statistical test, we compare the p-value with our level of significance to draw a conclusion.
Explanation:
The question involves conducting a null hypothesis test to determine whether the mean credit card balance of undergraduate students has significantly increased from $3,173, based on a sample data in an Excel file. In the context of hypothesis testing, the null hypothesis is the statement that the researcher seeks evidence against. In this case, the null hypothesis would be Option (a): The mean credit card balance for undergraduate students is $3,173.
The alternative hypothesis is the statement that we are trying to find evidence for. It is important to note that we cannot conclude that the mean credit card balance is 'significantly higher' unless we first conclude it is not $3,173. To do this, we would gather the sample data, calculate the mean credit card balance of the sample, and then conduct a statistical test to determine if the difference between the sample mean and $3,173 is statistically significant.
We would then compare the calculated p-value with our level of significance. If p-value less than level of significance, we reject the null hypothesis, providing evidence that the alternative hypothesis may be true. Note that we can never prove that the null hypothesis is true, only disprove it. This is a fundamental principle of statistical hypothesis testing.
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