I'm new to statistics and to statistical tests, so please bare with me.
The attached sketches are rough estimations, and are meant merely for visualization and clarity.
Suppose the following is the distribution of the income salary in some country:
Denote $X$ as a sample from that population. According to the Central limit theorem, we have $\bar{X}\sim N(\mu, \frac{\sigma}{\sqrt{n}})$, where $n$ is the size of the sample $X$, and $\sigma$ is the standard deviation of the population (the "population" here are salaries, of-course). So roughly, $\bar{X}$ might looks like this:
To my best understanding, the bigger the $n$, the "better", in the sense that the sample will more likely represent the original distribution. This can be seen in the $\frac{\sigma}{\sqrt{n}}$ going to $0$ as $n$ grows, thus the Gaussian bell will be further and further "squashed". (Sorry for the informality, I'm working on sharpening my intuition for now)
My question is this: Why does all of this mean that the bigger $n$ is, the more easier it will be to reject the null hypothesis?
Consider a right-side z-test: both the critical value and my sampled $\bar{X}$ will shift left together as $n$ grows:
The critical value is: $\bar{X}_c=\mu_0+Z_{(1-\alpha)}\cdot\frac{\sigma}{\sqrt{n}}$, where $\mu_0$ taken from the null hypothesis, $Z_{(1-\alpha)}$ is the $Z$ value for significance level of $\alpha$, and indeed, again we see that bigger $n$ means that the critical value will get closer to $\mu_0$, but as $n$ gets bigger, our sample $X$ is bigger and thus $\bar{X}$ is more "accurate" - meaning closer to $\mu_0$!
Why does all of this mean that the bigger n is, the more easier it will be to reject the null hypothesis?
That's true only when the null hypothesis is false. $\endgroup$That's true only when the null hypothesis is false.
that's what I was missing! $\endgroup$