Testing hypothesis and significance level

[vptran84]

Let N be the number of flips of a coin up to an including the first flip of heads. Develope a significance test for N at the alpha=0.1 to test the hypothesis H that the coin is fair.

Can someone please help me with this statistics problem? I have no clue how to start it. Thank you

 

[morry]

We are covering this in class next week. So stay tuned. :D

 

[tacman]

Sure, I can help you with this problem! Let's break it down step by step.

First, let's define our variables. N represents the number of flips of a coin until we get our first heads. This means that N can take on values of 1, 2, 3, and so on.

Next, we need to define our null and alternative hypotheses. Our null hypothesis, H, states that the coin is fair, meaning that the probability of getting heads is 0.5 and the probability of getting tails is also 0.5. Our alternative hypothesis, denoted as Ha, would then be that the coin is not fair, meaning that the probability of getting heads is not equal to 0.5.

Now, we need to choose our significance level, denoted as alpha (α). The significance level is the maximum probability of making a Type I error, which is rejecting the null hypothesis when it is actually true. In this problem, we are given that our significance level is 0.1, or 10%.

Next, we need to determine our test statistic. In this case, we will use the number of heads we get in N flips as our test statistic. We will denote this as X and it follows a binomial distribution with parameters N and p=0.5.

To perform our significance test, we need to calculate the p-value, which is the probability of getting a test statistic at least as extreme as the one we observed, assuming that the null hypothesis is true. In this case, our observed test statistic is the number of heads we get in N flips, and the null hypothesis states that the probability of getting heads is 0.5.

Using a binomial probability calculator, we can calculate the p-value for each possible value of N. For example, if N=10, the p-value would be 0.0107. This means that there is a 0.0107 probability of getting 10 or more heads in 10 flips, assuming the coin is fair. We can repeat this process for all possible values of N.

Now, we need to compare our p-value to our significance level. If the p-value is less than or equal to our significance level, we reject the null hypothesis and conclude that the coin is not fair. If the p-value is greater than our significance level, we fail to reject the null hypothesis and conclude that there is not enough evidence to say that the coin