An Exercise for Illustrating the Logic of Hypothesis Testing

Hypothesis testing is one of the more difficult concepts for students to master in a basic, undergraduate statistics course. Students often are puzzled as to why statisticians simply don't calculate the probability that a hypothesis is true. This article presents an exercise that forces students to lay out on their own a procedure for testing a hypothesis. The result is that the students develop a better understanding for the rationale and process of hypothesis testing. As a consequence, they improve their ability to grasp the meaning of a p-value and to interpret the results of a significance test.