7. Product and Process Comparisons

7.1.	Introduction

Goals of this section

The primary goal of this section is to lay a foundation for understanding statistical tests and confidence intervals that are useful for making decisions about processes and comparisons among processes. The materials covered are: 

• Scope
• Assumptions
• Introduction to hypothesis testing
• Introduction to confidence intervals
• Relationship between hypothesis testing and confidence intervals
• Outlier detection
• Detection of sequential trends in data or processes

Hypothesis testing and confidence intervals

This chapter explores the types of comparisons which can be made from data and explains hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, and the interpretation of each.