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Hypothesis Testing ??? In the North American court system, a defendant is assume

ID: 3059672 • Letter: H

Question

Hypothesis Testing ??? In the North American court system, a defendant is assumed innocent until proven guilty. In an ideal world, we would expect that the truly innocent will always go free, whereas the truly guilty ones will always be convicted. Now, let us tackle the following questions? 1. In the context of the Type I error and Type II error, can you relate a court trial scenario in terms of these two errors? 2. What would be your ideal situation if you are the defendant? 3. What would be your ideal situation if you are the prosecuting attorney? 4. Lastly, what do you think of the scenario of an ideal world where we expect that no innocent will be found guilty and all guilty will be convicted in the context of Type I error and Type II error?

Explanation / Answer

in an ideal world a truly innocent will always go free, whereas the truly guilty will always be convicted.

now type I error is falsely rejecting a true null hypothesis. and type II error is falsely accepting a wrong null hypothesis.

in the court system a defendant is assumed innocent until proven guilty.

1. so in the court trial system, the null hypothesis is like the defendant is innocent.

rejecting null hypothesis is equivalent to convicting the defendant.

so type I error would be convicting a truly innocent person.

type II error would be set free a truly guilty person.

2. if you are a defendant, your aim would be to set yourself free at any cost.

now if you are truly innocent then wanting to set yourself free will not arise any problem.

but if you are guilty and then wanting to set yourself free is actually like willing to accept a false null hypothesis.

hence from defendants point of view the aim is to maximize type II error.

3. from prosecuting attorny's point of view , his aim would be that at any cost he should not convict a truly innocent person, that is not to falsely rejecting a true null hypothesis.

so his aim is to minimize type I error.

4. hence in ideal world it is not possible to reduce both type I and type II error simultaneously. if one is reduced, automatically the other would increas.