

The two-tailed test takes as a null hypothesis the belief that both variations have equal conversion rates. Now suppose you are A/B testing a control and a variation, and you want to measure the difference in conversion rate between both variants. The lower the p-value, the less plausible it is that the null hypothesis is true. The p-value represents the probability of seeing a result at least that “extreme” in the event the null hypothesis were true. Now suppose you’ve run a test and received a p-value. The null hypothesis is what you believe to be true absent evidence to the contrary. In frequentist tests, you have a null hypothesis. both are bell-shaped and skewed left).Why would you choose one over another? The two-tailed test can show evidence that the control and variation are different, but the one-tailed test can show evidence if variation is better than the control.Ĭhris Stucchio does a great job explaining the difference between the two tests in context:

However, they should follow the same shape (i.e. Observations are not normally distributed.In other words, there should be no relationship between the two groups or within each group. The independent variable should be two independent, categorical groups.The dependent variable should be measured on an ordinal scale or a continuous scale.Add up all of your totals from Steps 2 and 3.Repeat Step 2 for all observations in sample 1.For example, if you have ten that are less and two that are equal: 10 + 2(1/2) = 11. If the observations are equal, count it as one half.

Count how many observations in sample 2 are smaller than it.

For small samples, use the direct method (see below) to find the U statistic For larger samples, a formula is necessary. The result of performing a Mann Whitney U Test is a U Statistic. The null hypothesis for the test is that the probability is 50% that a randomly drawn member of the first population will exceed a member of the second population.Īnother option for the null hypothesis is that the two samples come from the same population (i.e.
