A tentative explanation which indicates that an event does not follow a chance distribution; a contrast to the null hypothesis.

A statistical statement that expresses a relationship between two (or more) variables.

The alternate hypothesis, or alternative hypothesis, together with the null hypothesis are the two rival hypothesis whose likelihoods are compared by a statistical hypothesis test. Usually the alternate hypothesis is the possibility that an observed effect is genuine and the null hypothesis is the rival possibility that it has resulted from random chance.