Download The Starbucks Problem: Hypothesis Test

Starbucks Problem (Hypothesis Testing)
An advertising firm hired by the Starbucks store on a local college campus is wondering
whether the store should tailor its ads more to men or to women. The firm completes an
observational study of the store, gathering gender data at various times of the day
throughout a week. The firm gathered a sample 260 customers; 154 of the customers were
female and 106 were male.
Step 1: Formulating a Statistical Question
What is the statistical question?
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
(Note: Your question should require the use of a hypothesis test.)
Null Hypothesis:
Alternate Hypothesis:
H0 =
Ha =
Step 2: Designing a plan and collecting data

What data do we need to collect?

How can we design a simulation to produce samples?
Step 3: Analyzing the data

Create a representation of the distribution.

Find the p-value for the sample statistic (i.e. the probability of a value at or more
extreme than our statistic).
Step 4: Interpreting the data

Examine the strength of the evidence.
Guidelines for evaluating strength of evidence from p-values:
0.10 < p-value
not much evidence against null hypothesis
0.05 < p-value  0.10
moderate evidence against the null hypothesis
0.01 < p-value  0.05
strong evidence against the null hypothesis
p-value  0.01
very strong evidence against the null hypothesis

Formulate a conclusion about the hypothesis.
This lesson was adapted from Shaughnessy, J.M., Chance, B., & Kranendonk, H. (2009). Focus in High Schoo Mathematics Reasoning and
Sense Making: Statistics and Probability. Reston, VA.: The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Inc.