Ha: μ > 50 implies what type of statistical test?

• A. One-sided test
• B. Two-sided test
• C. Nonparametric test
• D. Paired test

Answer: (A)

In hypothesis testing, the direction of the alternative hypothesis determines whether the test is one-sided or two-sided. If the alternative says the mean is greater than 50, you’re specifically looking for evidence that the mean lies in that upper direction. That means you use a one-sided (right-tailed) test, because you reject the null only when the test statistic shows a value far enough above the threshold to support μ > 50. The null hypothesis would typically be μ ≤ 50 in this setup.

A two-sided test would have an alternative like μ ≠ 50, which looks for deviations in either direction and uses both tails of the distribution. The terms nonparametric or paired refer to the method or study design, not the direction of the alternative, so they don’t define the test type here.