E526. Hypothesis Testing Explained｜假设检验详解：Alpha、Beta、Power、MDE与样本量

假设检验详解（Hypothesis Testing Explained）：从第一性原理理解Alpha（α）、Beta（β）、统计功效（Power）、MDE、标准误与样本量。视频为英文讲解，已提供简体中文字幕；内容也涵盖原假设/备择假设、第一类/第二类错误与临界值。

中文技术伴读（含公式、视频截图与常见误解）：

https://www.superlinear.academy/c/posts/hypothesis-testing-alpha-beta-power-mde

【为什么重新上传】

这期视频最早由我和Statsig数据科学团队在2024年共同制作，并发布在Statsig的YouTube频道。后来Statsig不再使用那个频道，原视频也不再在线，所以我把最终版本重新上传到自己的频道，方便需要的人继续观看。

Hypothesis testing explained visually and from first principles: null and alternative hypotheses, standard error, Type I and Type II errors, alpha, beta, statistical power, minimum detectable effect (MDE), critical values, and sample size.

Many textbooks blur Fisher’s significance testing with the Neyman–Pearson decision framework. This tutorial separates the two, then reconnects the concepts into one coherent experimental design.

You’ll learn:

• Null vs. alternative hypotheses

• Standard deviation vs. standard error

• Type I error, alpha, and critical values

• Type II error, beta, and statistical power

• How sample size changes power and MDE

• Minimum Detectable Effect (MDE)

• Common misconceptions about p-values and “accepting” H₀

This video was originally produced with the Statsig data science team in 2024 and refined through six versions.

00:00 Why hypothesis testing matters

02:46 H₀, alpha, and the critical value

06:41 H₁, beta, and statistical power

09:26 Statistical power in three views

11:23 MDE, standard error, and sample size

14:26 Common misconceptions and practical takeaways

15:41 Conclusion

Presented by Yuzheng Sun, PhD.

What is 课代表立正?

《课代表立正》是一档关于AI、职业与商业的中文播客。这里既有与AI研究者、科技创业者、一线管理者和真实实践者的深度对话，也有课代表立正对产品、增长、创业与职业选择的亲身复盘。我们不只追逐新工具，更关心：当AI改变能力和成本，个人与组织怎样重新设计工作，把判断和本事做成真正进入现实、值得留下的作品。

主播课代表立正，本名孙煜征，康奈尔大学经济学博士、Superlinear Academy创始人。曾任Amazon经济学家、Meta数据科学家和腾讯IEG副总监，也是OpenAI收购团队早期成员。2020年以来完成200+场公开对话，跨平台关注者400K+。

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I have created over 500 videos as a
data scientist content creator, but this
video is the first one that I would call
a must watch for all data scientists.
It is hypothesis testing.
Hypothesis testing is one of the most
fundamental and universal topic for data
scientist, but it is one of the most
confusing and misunderstood topic as well.
So much so that you can actually create
an arbitrage by betting with a data
scientist and make profits because
most data scientists would take the
bet since the topic is expected to be
well understood, but they would lose
the bet because it is so confusing.
The reason for it being so confusing
is because our textbook is an
inconsistent blend of two frameworks,
the p value and significance test,
and the hypothesis testing framework.
Of course, online articles
only exacerbate this problem.
I can tell you as a PhD and as an
experienced data scientist specialized
in the domain of experiment, I didn't
understand this concept until recently.
When I shared that on LinkedIn,
many data scientists resonated
with my feeling because we always
need to go to the textbook for the
technical definitions, which, is a
signal that we didn't understand the
concept at a first principle level.
Why are we uniquely qualified
to answer this question when
textbook failed to do so?
We have an experienced data science
team that has worked for years with
customers on their experimentation
challenges and understanding.
we've done this from very inexperienced
to very experienced and we've had to
walk the fine line between the theory and
the practical aspects of experimentation
We distilled our years of experiences
and our hundreds of conversations
explaining this concept to our customers
and we remade this video six times.
Finally, we got to a tutorial without
any formulas based on first principles
with the help of a lot of visualizations
that everyone, including middle
school students, can understand and
is technically correct and consistent.
There are 10 concepts in this video
and we'll introduce them incrementally.
First, I'll introduce the concept
of the null hypothesis, type one
error, alpha, and the critical value.
Second, I'll introduce the
alternative hypothesis, type
two error, beta, and power.
Then, I will visualize how
power change with sample size.
And finally, I will introduce the concept
of the minimum detectable effect or MDE,
and how that change with sample size.
if you don't fully understand hypothesis
testing, If you feel like you have to
go to the textbook definition, every
time you talk about alpha, beta, and
power, this is your chance to understand.
And if you do, this is a great video to
help you explain it to your stakeholders
to save you hours of time down the road.
All right, let's start
with the null hypothesis.
Since this is the first time we
introduce hypothesis testing, let's
also clarify the language between
standard deviation and standard error.
The concept of the null hypothesis
is there is no treatment effect.
It is commonly expressed as the difference
in means between the treatment group
and the control group going to zero.
According to the central limit theorem,
the underlying distribution of this
difference in means is going to normal
with sufficiently large sample, and
by sufficiently large, 30 is enough.
Pay attention to the
underlying distribution.
The error of the underlying distribution
is called the standard deviation.
The error of the sample mean
is called the standard error.
Following this underlying distribution,
if we draw one observation, it can be
anywhere on the x axis with this chart.
But if we draw many observations
and take the sample mean, the
error of the sample mean is going
to be smaller for two reasons.
One, more chance of being
centered, and two, the left and
right cancel each other out.
So standard error is the
standard deviation divided by the
square root of the sample size.
To make things simple let's assume
the underlying distribution of our
null hypothesis is mean zero, standard
deviation of one, and we have a sample
of 30, the standard error of this sample
mean is going to be one divided by the
square root of 30, which is about, 0.18.
In hypothesis testing, our goal
is to make judgments according
to the sample we observe.
So we plot the sample mean
with the standard error.
The judgment we want to make is,
is there a treatment effect or not?
Shall we accept this null hypothesis
or reject this null hypothesis?
If you wonder, did I make a mistake
by saying, accepting the null
hypothesis, instead of saying, failing
to reject the null hypothesis, go to
our blog to check the clarification.
I'm actually correct because this is
a world of only two possibilities.
That is the beauty of introducing
concepts incrementally because
we can go to the most intuitive
definitions without making mistakes.
Anyway, let's go back to our
judgment and the decision rule.
Shall we reject or shall we accept?
The decision rule is important
because we are in a world of
probability, anything on the x axis
can happen with different chance.
We can never be 100 percent correct,
so we want to make certain mistakes
with certain probabilities that is
acceptable to our decision rule.
Finding the right balance is what
makes hypothesis testing useful.
If we set our decision rule to be
extreme, we won't make mistakes, but
we won't make discoveries either.
This will be clear when we talk about the
alternative hypothesis, but let's just
stay with the null hypothesis right now.
With the null hypothesis, we want to
set a rule, we want to set a threshold,
above this threshold, we reject the
null hypothesis, below the threshold,
we accept the null hypothesis . This
threshold is called the critical value.
As you see, I only have the null
hypothesis, so there is only
one type of mistake I can make.
The type 1 error, when the null
hypothesis is true, I falsely
rejected the null hypothesis.
If I move the threshold, if I move
the critical value, I can change
the probability of my type 1 error.
Which is the blue area and the
curve, and it's called alpha.
So suppose I want my alpha
to be 5 percent or 0.05.
I already know the distribution
of my sample means,
I do some calculation and discovered
the critical value in this setting
corresponding to 5 percent alphais 0.30
.
Our simple decision rule is, if we
draw a sample of 30 observations
and calculate the sample mean, if
the sample mean is above 0.3, Then
we reject the null hypothesis.
If the sample mean is below 0.3,
we accept the null hypothesis.
If we check the math, the
blue area, our alpha is 5%.
With the introduction of the null
hypothesis, alpha, and the critical
value, let's ready to make discovery
by having an alternative hypothesis.
When we talk about the alternative
hypothesis, there is another
important concept that textbook
do not talk about very much and
it can cause a lot of confusions.
That is, we have infinitely
many alternative hypotheses.
Alternative hypothesis is
theoretical construct, it's not real.
For example, I plotted a lot of
alternative hypothesis on this graph given
any observation, each of them are likely
to be true given certain probability.
We will clear this concept of
why we can talk about only one
alternative hypothesis in the world
of infinitely many alternative
hypotheses when we talk about MDE.
Right now, pay attention to my
language, for the sake of simplicity,
let's just look at one particular
alternative hypothesis with the
underlying distribution of mean equals
0.5 and standard deviation equals 1.
We show the alternative
hypothesis in red on this chart.
With the introduction of this
particular alternative hypothesis,
we can modify our decision rule.
For our sample of 30, if the observed
mean is above 0.3, Then we reject
the null hypothesis and accept this
particular alternative hypothesis.
If the observed mean is below 0.3,
we accept the null hypothesis and
reject the alternative hypothesis.
If the alternative hypothesis is
the truth, Then we made an error
when we reject the alternative
hypothesis and we can calculate
the probability of this error.
This error is called the type 2 error.
It is when we falsely reject the
alternative hypothesis when the
alternative hypothesis is true.
Beta is the probability
of making type 2 error.
This is a slightly confusing
part, but it's important.
If I move the alternative hypothesis,
if I have a different alternative
hypothesis, my beta would change.
Beta fundamentally really speaks
to the probability of rejecting a
particular alternative hypothesis.
And only by combining with
other conditions, rejecting the
alternative hypothesis implies
accepting the null hypothesis.
As you see, there are three things that
can impact beta, the standard error
of the alternative hypothesis, the
mean of the alternative hypothesis,
and how we choose the critical value.
We choose this critical value because
we want 5 percent alpha, which
corresponds to a particular beta given
a particular alternative hypothesis.
If we set up the alternative hypothesis
to be conservative, Beta is big.
If we set up the alternative hypothesis
to be extreme, beta is small.
We are very close to talking about the
tradeoff between discovery and mistake.
With that, we're ready to talk
about power, which is the central
topic of statistical testing.
The textbook definition of power
is 1 - beta, then many people stop
here, but you may wonder, why?
What does 1 minus beta mean?
What does power mean?
We should ask this question because
an intuitive understanding of
power is fundamental to everything.
So let's actually explain
power in three different ways.
From this graph, 1 minus beta is power.
It is the probability of accepting this
particular alternative hypothesis given
our assumptions and our decision rule.
The second way is let's
understand with an example.
Power is actually an intuitive concept.
It speaks to how much power we
have in detecting a true effect.
Let's use a real world example
of, uh, trying to determine the
most popular car manufacturer.
If I observe one car and one brand,
my observation is not very powerful.
If I observe a million different
cars, my observation is very powerful.
In short, a powerful test means I have a
higher chance of detecting a true effect.
And the third way, let's actually combine
this definition of power and the intuitive
example of more sample leads to more
power, and visualize them on the chart.
Let's change the sample
size from 30 to 100.
When we do that, the standard error got
smaller, so the distribution got narrower.
Suppose we are okay with alpha
being 5%, the 5 percent alpha now
corresponds to a smaller critical value.
The smaller critical value plus
the smaller standard error gives us
much more power, which means, for
the same alternative hypothesis.
Now we have much less chance of making a
type two error of falsely rejecting it.
So we have a lot more power to
detect this alternative hypothesis.
So hopefully by now, I made
the concept of the alternative
hypothesis beta and power clear.
And finally, we are ready to talk about
the Minimum Detectable Effect, or MDE.
And as promised, we'll explain the
concept of why we talk about one
particular alternative hypothesis
in the world of this infinitely
many alternative hypothesis.
So let's add the red dotted line to
represent the mean of our alternative
hypothesis and when the mean is
0.5, it corresponds to a beta
of 14 percent or a power of 86%.
What if for the same sample
we want our power to be 20%?
We go to a different
alternative hypothesis.
Remember, all of them are theoretical
construct, so I can choose anyone.
I discovered when the mean of our
alternative hypothesis is 0.45,
it corresponds to a beta of 20%.
That is a more conservative
alternative hypothesis.
So we have more chance
of making type two error.
Now comes the concept of the
minimum detectable effect.
Remember, in statistical testing,
we almost always want more power.
More power means we have a higher
chance of detecting a true effect.
So any alternative hypothesis to
the right of this particular one
is a good alternative hypothesis.
It is an alternative hypothesis
with less beta and more power.
So the minimum detectable effect
is given our assumptions of the
underlying distribution, given our
null hypothesis, given an alpha, so
we can determine the critical value.
And given a beta, so we know how
much power we need at least, what is
the minimum value of the mean of the
alternative hypothesis that we can detect?
Any alternative hypothesis
above this minimum, we can also
detect with even more power.
That is the definition of MDE.
While the concept is still
fresh, let's see how MDE changed
with sample size to tie all the
concepts together one more time.
So we changed our sample
from 30 to 100 again.
And this time, we fixed
both alpha and beta.
Again, when the sample size increase our
standard error decrease, the distribution
of sample means gets narrower, gets
more accurate.Same as before, if we
tolerate the same level of alpha being
5%, we get a smaller critical value.
Now, if we hold beta constant at
20%, our MDE decreases as a result.
When we increase our sample
size from 30 to 100, our MDE
decreased from 0.45 to 0.25.
That is the other key
takeaway from this video.
When your sample size
increase, your MDE decrease.
That is such an important
takeaway in statistical testing.
More sample means we can detect a
smaller effect, but if our effect
is bigger, we don't require a
large sample to detect such effect.
So even for companies without
a huge sample size, if their
treatment effect is large enough, A
B testing can reliably detect that.
Hope I made everything clear from the null
hypothesis, the alternative hypothesis
to MDE and all the concepts in below.
I also elaborated two important but
under discussed concepts, standard
deviation versus standard error, and the
infinitely many alternative hypothesis.
The reason I spent so much time in
talking about power, because almost
everything in A B testing is indirectly
or directly related to power.
For example, variance reduction
techniques such as CUPED.
In this video, we fix standard
deviation to be one, but, in reality,
standard deviation can be different
and can be reduced by different
techniques, which can increase power.
Sequential testing, why an
underpowered test can lead to
false discovery and bad decisions.
Not to mention the everlasting contest
between speed of the experiment,
scale, the sample size of the
experiment, and how much effect we
expect to detect from the experiment.
Those are deep, important,
and valuable concepts in the
practical use of A B testing.
Of course, I will make a lot
of videos in the future to talk
about these concepts one by one.
But all of that builds on
the foundation of a solid
understanding of statistical power.
So, hope this episode is useful to you.
Stay tuned if you want to
see more content like this.
See you next time.