Results

Some textbooks have incorrectly stated that rejecting the null hypothesis that two population means are equal does not justify a conclusion about which population mean is larger. Instead, they say that all one can conclude is that the population means differ. The validity of concluding the direction of the effect is clear if you note that a two-tailed test at the 0.05 level is equivalent to two separate one-tailed tests each at the 0.025 level. The two null hypotheses are then

If the former of these is rejected, then the conclusion is that the population mean for obese patients is lower than that for average-weight patients. If the latter is rejected, then the conclusion is that the population mean for obese patients is higher than that for average-weight patients.