null hypothesis

(NL: nulhypothese)

In the context of a statistical hypothesis test, the null hypothesis (often written as \(H_0\)) is an assumption about a population parameter that we want to test.

The null hypothesis usually represents the assumption that there is no significant difference between the population parameter and a given value, or that there is no relationship between two variables.

The procedure of the test is based on the assumption that the null hypothesis is true. If we then encounter a contradiction, the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted.