Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.

i'm confused about null hypotheses. Can anyone explain?

I'm doing an investigation. my hypothesis is "that the age of a crown fern determines its fertility". is this the null hypothesis or the alternate?

1 Answer

Relevance
  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    That should be an alternative hypothesis.

    It depends what you are testing. For example, I will assume that you are trying to test whether the age of a crown fern determines its fertility or not. That is your hypothesis, but it has not been proven yet. Null hypothesis states the "no change" outcome of your hypothesis (i.e. your hypothesis is incorrect, so there the fact that there is no correlation between age and fertility remains), hence the null hypothesis would be "The age of the crown fern does not determine its fertility".

    The alternative hypothesis would be that your hypothesis is correct, hence it would be "the age of the crown fern determines its fertility".

    The site I included below may explain it better than me.

Still have questions? Get your answers by asking now.