11.6 Hypothesis Tests for the Difference of Proportions when Sampling from Two Independent Binomial Populations
Let
and
be random samples taken from two independent binomial populations with pX and pY representing the proportions of successes in the first and second binomial populations. In addition, let X and Y be independent random variables depicting the observed number of successes in the samples of sizes nX and nY, respectively. To test hypotheses regarding the differences in population proportions
, we must review the characteristics of the sampling distribution of the difference between two sample proportions. (Remember that these tests are only approximate and hold only for large samples.)
We know that the best estimators for pX and pY are the sample proportions of successes
, respectively, with

Hence the best estimator for pX − pY is
; and the best estimators for and are, respectively, ...
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