Question

a british pharmaceutical company, glaxo holdings, has recently developed a new drug for migraine headaches. among the claims glaxo made for its drug, called somatriptan, was that the mean time it takes for it to enter the bloodstream is less than 10 minutes. to convince the food and drug administration of the validity of this claim, glaxo conducted an experiment on a randomly chosen set of migraine sufferers. to prove its claim, what should they have taken as the null and what as the alternative hypothesis?

Answer 1

Glaxo Holdings should set the null hypothesis as the mean time for somatriptan to enter the bloodstream being equal to or greater than 10 minutes (H0: μ ≥ 10), and the alternative hypothesis should be that the mean time is less than 10 minutes (H1: μ < 10).

Step-by-step explanation:

To test the claim that the mean time sumatriptan takes to enter the bloodstream is less than 10 minutes, Glaxo Holdings should set up a hypothesis test. The null hypothesis (H0) should be a statement of no effect or no difference, suggesting that the mean time for the drug to enter the bloodstream is equal to or greater than 10 minutes. Formally, H0: μ ≥ 10, where μ is the population mean time for the drug to enter the bloodstream. The alternative hypothesis (H1 or Ha) represents the claim they are trying to prove, which is that the drug enters the bloodstream in less than 10 minutes. Therefore, the alternative hypothesis should be H1: μ < 10.