The news story discussed in Case Study 6.5 was headlined, \"NIH study finds that

Question

The news story discussed in Case Study 6.5 was headlined, "NIH study finds that coffee drinkers have lower risk of death" (Source: http://www.nih.gov). The news story was based on an article published in The New England Journal of Medicine (Freedman et. al., 2012) that followed hundreds of thousands of older adults from 1995 to 2008 and examined the association between drinking coffee and longevity. Based on the title, what would the null and alternative hypotheses be for this study? The authors concluded that those who drank coffee had a statistically significantly lower risk of death (during the time period of the study) than those who did not. Which type of error, type 1 or type 2, could have been made in making this conclusion? Explain what a type 1 error and a type 2 error would be in this situation. Which one do you think is more serious? Explain.

Explanation / Answer

1. Null Hypothesis states that,

H0 : Coffee drinkers have lower risk of death

Alternative Hypothesis is

Ha : Coffee drinkers have higher risk of death

b. Type 2 error is

Accepting null hypothesis, when it is infact,false.

Here,Conclusion has been made that those who drink coffee have significantly lower risk of death,

which clearly indicates, accepting null hypothesis.

Thus, Type 2 error could have been made in making this conclusion

c. Type 1 error is , concluding that those who drink coffee will have higher risk of death, when null hypothesis is true

Type 2 error is concluding that those who drink coffee will have lower risk of death, when null hypothesis is false.

Type 2 error is more serious, because in this case, due to the error, even when H0 is infact false, we accept that coffee drinkrs have lower risk of death,

Thus, we are here putting peoples' life into risk, by giving a false conclusion that Coffee drinkers have lower risk of death

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