6.54 Determining hypotheses. State the appropriate null hypothesis H0 and alternative hypothesis Ha in each of the following cases.

  1. (a) A 2015 study reported that 96% of students owned a cell phone. You plan to take an SRS of students to see if the percent has increased.

  2. (b) The examinations in a large freshman chemistry class are scaled after grading so that the mean score is 75. The professor thinks that students who attend early-morning recitation sections will have a higher mean score than the class as a whole. Her students in these sections this semester can be considered a sample from the population of all students who might attend an early-morning section, so she compares their mean score with 75.

  3. (c) The student newspaper at your college recently changed the format of its opinion page. You want to test whether students find the change an improvement. You take a random sample of students and select those who regularly read the newspaper. They are asked to indicate their opinions on the changes using a five-point scale: −2 if the new format is much worse than the old, −1 if the new format is somewhat worse than the old, 0 if the new format is the same as the old, +1 if the new format is somewhat better than the old, and +2 if the new format is much better than the old.