Alternative Hypothesis

The alternative hypothesis, Ha, is a statement of what a statistical hypothesis test is set up to establish.[1]

The null hypothesis (denoted H0) is a statement about the population statistic, such as µ.

The alternate hypothesis (denoted Ha) is a claim to be tested.

Science, in general, operates by disproving unsatisfactory hypotheses and proposing new-and-improved hypotheses which are testable. The approach we take in statistics is exactly this scientific method. We start with a hypothesis which we assume is correct. We call this the null hypothesis or H0, and our goal is to reject H0 in favor of the alternative hypothesis, Ha.[2]

 

Ha can also be denoted as H1.

 



[1] http://www.stats.gla.ac.uk/steps/glossary/hypothesis_testing.html

[2] http://www.stat.tamu.edu/stat30x/notes/node107.html