In the preceding section, we had a brief discussion of what is referred to as descriptive statistics. In this section, we will discuss what is known as inferential statistics, whereby we try to use characteristics of the sample dataset to draw conclusions about the wider population as a whole.
One of the most important methods in inferential statistics is hypothesis testing. In hypothesis testing, we try to determine whether a certain hypothesis or research question is true to a certain degree. One example of a hypothesis would be this: eating spinach improves long-term memory.
In order to investigate this statement using hypothesis testing, we can select a group of people as subjects for our study and divide them into two groups, or samples. The first group will be the experimental group, and it will eat spinach...
