An in-class activity is described that can be used not only to motivate hypothesis testing, but also to understand and compute the p-value and power in a statistical test. (Contains 3 figures.)

This study explores opportunity costs of postsecondary education in the U.S. in the past three decades. Based on human capital theory, data from the U.S. Census, along with parameters for high education achievement (involving bachelors and advanced degrees), were fed into a forecasting model developed for this purpose. Beyond descriptive…