Medical tests have been developed to detect many serious diseases. A medical test is designed to minimize the probability that it will produce a "false positive" or a "false negative." A false positive is a positive test result for an individual who does not have the disease, whereas a false negative is a negative test result for an individual who does have the disease.
a. If we treat a medical test for a disease as a statistical test of hypothesis, what are the null and alternative hypoth eses for the medical test?
b. What are the Type I and Type II errors for the test? Relate each to false positives and false negatives.
c. Which of these errors has graver consequences? Considering this error, is it more important to minimize a or b? Explain.