Question

Food inspectors inspect samples of food products to see if they are safe. This can be thought of as a hypothesis test with the following hypotheses.

H₀: the food is safe

H_a: the food is not safe

The following is an example of what type of error?

The sample suggests that the food is safe, but it actually is not safe.

• type I
• type II
• not an error

Answer 1

Answer

we know that type I error is rejection of true null hypothesis, i.e. we reject the null hypothesis, even when it is true

and type II error is failing to reject the false null hypothesis, i.e. we failed to reject the null hypothesis, even when it is false.

In the above example, sample suggested that food is safe (this means it is suggesting that null hypothesis is true), but it is actually not safe (this means that the null hypothesis is false)

So, this is a case of failing to reject the false null hypothesis, i.e. we know that the food is not safe, but we are saying it is safe.

This is clearly a type II error because we are failed to reject the false null hypothesis.

So, option B is correct.