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#rs/discussion #rs/class/ad450
My current understanding of NHST is that it is a technique used to determine whether something that is observed is due to random chance or whether there is really something going on. This is important because there are many things that are just due to random chance and using this type of testing helps to ensure that you are looking for reasons why it might be significant rather than assuming it is when you start.
One place where I have used Null Hypothesis Significance Testing is in my biology class that I took this year. In each lab that we did we created a null and alternative hypothesis and then worked to determine whether we should accept or reject the null. One of these labs was testing whether sodium bicarbonate had any effect on the photosynthetic rate of leaves. Our null hypothesis was that there was no effect and we had to accept the null because we didn't find any statistical significance between the variables. To determine this we used 95% confidence intervals although other methods could have been used. Some of the challenges that I have faced have mostly been around knowing what tests to use since sometimes it can be hard to tell based on the experiment.