Null Hypothesis: There Is No Significant Association Between Oil Prices And Total Net Income. Dissertation Hypothesis Example

Inferential Statistics and Findings

In this paper we will discuss the basics concepts of statistics and probability theory related to a real-world problem. In this case we are given with the data set of the total net income of Makai Transport, given quarterly from December 2011 to September 2014. The question is to investigate if the external factor of fuel price during the same period has affected the company net income. We know that fuel prices are strongly associated with the world oil prices. We collected the information about oil prices during the same period of time and give it in a table below:
We now want to investigate is there a significant association between oil prices and total net income. Correlation analysis is useful for this purpose.

Alternative hypothesis: There is a significant difference between oil prices and total net income.
H0: ρ=0Ha: ρ≠0

Set level of significance alpha at 0.05

Perform testing (I used Minitab 16 statistical software):
Correlations: Oil Price (Petroleum); Total Net Income
Pearson correlation of Oil Price (Petroleum) and Total Net Income = 0,465
P-Value = 0,127
Since p-value of the test is 0.127 and it is bigger than level of significance alpha, we have failed to reject the null hypothesis. We have no evidence to say that there is a significant difference between oil prices and total net income (at 5% level of significance).
That’s why our conclusion is that the total net income of Makai Transport Company was not directly affected for such external factor as fuel (oil) prices during December 2011 - September 2014.

References

Crude Oil (petroleum) Monthly Price - US Dollars per Barrel. Index Mundi. http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=crude-oil&months=60 Retrieved 03/06/2015.
Cohen, J., Cohen P., West, S.G., & Aiken, L.S. (2002). Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences (3rd ed.). Psychology Press. ISBN 0-8058-2223-2.