Statistical significance, hypothesis testing, Type I and Type II errors - Essay ExampleWhen completing hypothesis testing there are two types of errors that may occur: a Type 1 or a Type 2 error. A Type 1 error occurs when the null hypothesis is rejected even though it was true (Bluman 2003). A Type 2 error occurs when the null hypothesis is accepted or not rejected even though it was false (Bluman 2003). An example of a Type 1 error would be a pregnancy test that indicates a person is not pregnant when they actually are. A Type 1 error probability is denoted by an alpha or the Greek symbol of ?. This is in contrast to the Type 2 error, which is denoted by beta or the Greek symbol of ?. An example of a Type 2 would be a pregnancy test that indicates a person is pregnant when they are not. According to the article entitled “Statistics Tutorial: Power of a Hypothesis Test,� “the probability of not committing a Type II error is called the power of a hypothesis test�(“Statistics tutorial: power of a hypothesis test�).
