what is the null hypothesis and can you give me some simple examples?
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The null hypothesis is the hypothesis that an observed result (e.g. a difference in average weight between a group of rats fed a steady diet of Twinkies and another group fed normal rat chow, or the correlation between sunspot activity and the Metacritic ratings of Taylor Swift albums) is entirely attributable to random chance.
You can use something called the normal curve, also called the Gaussian distribution, to calculate the probability of said result occurring under conditions where there is nothing happening besides random variation.
By convention, if the probability is 5% or less – in other words, if you would have a 5% or lower probability of getting the same result under pure random-chance conditions – we reject the null hypothesis and say that the result is “statistically significant.”
The phrase “null hypothesis” is frequently misused by hacky pseudointellectuals to mean something like “the mundane as opposed to the extraordinary explanation” or “the negation of the hypothesis in question.” It means neither of these things – someone who uses the term in this way is just throwing around science-y phrases to sound smarter than they actually are.
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