Question

a. Is the t-test the appropriate test for this study?

b. yes, state why, using examples to support your agreement or if no, state why not, using examples to support your disagreement

An independent sample t-test would be used if a professor at FIU wanted to compare his calculus classes scores from the past two semesters. Class 1 had 20 students and an average of 70 and SD of 15. Class 2 had 25 students and an average of 74 standard deviation of 25. You have to use alpha .05 to determine if class 1 and 2 had a difference between scores by using the degrees of freedom on a normal distribution table.

Answer 1

The t-test is the appropriate test for this study. The t-test compares two averages or means and tells us if they are different from each other. The t-test also tells us how significant the differences are. In other words, it lets us know if those differences could have happened by chance. In this case, we need to compare the averages of Class 1 and Class 2 to check for differences in Calculus score. Another example is when the professor may want to test if holding revision classes for students improves their calculus scores. There will be a control group (a group who not given the revision classes). The control group may show an average score of 85, while the group taking the revision classes may have an average score of 90. It would seem that the revision classes might work. But it could be due to a fluke. To test this, researchers would use a t-test to find out if the results are repeatable for an entire population.