ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the inference activities, commonly referred to as hypothesis testing. The basis of the scientific method is hypothesis testing. It is the central hypothesis that leads to the design of the research that itself produces data that tests that hypothesis. Statistical hypothesis testing commonly begins with a hypothesis that the researcher hopes to disprove or nullify. Statistical decision rule invariance is a property of the uniformity of the result of the hypothesis test. Applied statisticians are integral members of the research team. These productive statisticians focus on the design of the data collection activity, the actual data collection effort with its resultant quality control, and the analysis of the collected data. Hypothesis testing for the equality of the variance from two populations is often carried out as a preamble to hypothesis testing on the means of two populations. Like the binomial distribution, the Poisson distribution lends itself to statistical hypothesis testing.
