1. Hypothesis testing involves formulating a null and alternative hypothesis, selecting a significance level, calculating a test statistic, determining critical values, and making a decision to reject or fail to reject the null hypothesis.
2. For comparing means of two independent samples, a t-test is used if variances are unknown and a z-test if variances are known. The hypotheses test if the population means are equal.
3. To compare proportions of two independent samples, a z-test is used which tests if the population proportions are equal.