Question

A criminal investigator conducts a study on the accuracy of fingerprint matching and recruits a random sample of 35 people to participate. Since this is a random sample of people, we don’t expect the fingerprints to match the comparison print. In the general population, a score of 80 indicates no match. Scores greater than 80 indicate a match. If the mean score suggests a match, then the fingerprint matching criteria are not accurate.

The null hypothesis is that the mean match score is 80. The alternative hypothesis is that the mean match score is greater than 80.

The criminal investigator chooses a 5% level of significance. She performs the experiment and analyzes the results. She uses a t-test for a mean and obtains a p-value of 0.04.

Which of the following is a reasonable interpretation of her results?

Answer 1

Solution:

This is a right tailed test.

Since, P-value = 0.04 is less than the level of significance 0.05, it is concluded that reject the null hypothesis.

It is concluded that the null hypothesis Ho is rejected. Therefore, there is enough evidence to claim that the mean match score is greater than 80., at the 0.05 significance level.