Null Hypothesis and Alternative Hypothesis in the Court Link: https://researchsk

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Null Hypothesis and Alternative Hypothesis in the Court

Link:

https://researchskills.epigeum.com/courses/researchskills/473/course_files/images/course_specific/activity_images/04_1_10_comic1.png

I found the image above very helpful in understanding the concept of null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis. This cartoon expresses the null hypothesis as “innocent until proven guilty” and this completely makes sense. We learn that the null hypothesis is the first hypothesis that is making a prediction about a certain data. There is “nothing special going on (OLI assignments)” and it’s labeled as Ho. The second or alternative hypothesis is the prediction that is challenging the null hypothesis, therefor, trying to predict something different and labeled as Ha.

If we follow the concept of “innocent until proven guilty,” it’s easier to understand how the null hypothesis works. The evidence that are provided would be the “p-values” that are examined to determine how likely it is to receive the null hypothesis as data. The jury in the last stage of the cartoon tries to explain that we cannot ever accept Ho (null hypothesis). If we use the basic rules of using the p-value for a court case, this would be:

Ho= defendant (null hypothesis)

Ha= plaintiff (alternative hypothesis)

If the p-value is less than 0.05, the evidence received is showing that it’s very unlikely for the defendant to be innocent. So, the defendant is not accepted as innocent and is proven guilty. We have accepted the evidence provided by the plaintiff, Ha and so we reject Ho.

If the p-value is equal to or greater than 0.05, we don’t have enough evidence to show that the defendant is guilty, but we cannot also say the plaintiff is incorrect. So we fail to reject Ho and fail to accept Ha. In order for the defendant to be proven guilty, more evidence is needed.

If the plaintiff knows for sure that the defendant is guilty, in order to challenge the null hypothesis, there must be enough evidence (p-value<0.05) to prove the null hypothesis must be rejected (proven guilty). I had some fun with this case, did you?

A. can explain the hypotheses in terms of the defendant being guilty or not guilty

Explanation / Answer

•The Null Hypothesis (Ho) is assumed to be true

–This is like the defendant being presumed to be “Not Guilty”

–Our justice system is not based on “guilty until proven innocent”

–Likewise, we don’t assume that our data is showing something interesting until the evidence stacks up

So the  plaintiff(prosecuting lawyer) - provide evidence beyond a “reasonable doubt” that the defendant is guitly.

Null hypothesis Ho : Defendant is not guilty

Alternate hypothesis Ha : Defendant is guilty.

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