ABSTRACT
So far the emphasis has been on basic theoretical results including the problem of how to estimate parameters associated with a particular population of subjects. This chapter introduces the basic results in an area of statistics that has played a central role in the social sciences. The general problem is making inferences about whether the parameters of a distribution satisfy certain properties that are of interest in a specific study. For example, in chapter four the issue was raised about whether there is any relationship between the height of the candidates who run for president of the United States and the person who wins the election. It was suggested that if there is no relationship, the probability of the taller person winning should be .5. Of course, even if p=.5, there is, for any x, 0≤x≤n, a positive probability of observing x successes in n trials, and so the issue is whether the observed number of successes is reasonably consistent with p=.5
