Question

An educator wants to study the use of clickers in the classroom. For which of the following scenarios would a two-sample t-test be appropriate?

		The educator asks students if they like or don't like using the clicker, and they want to see if a majority if students enjoy using the clicker.
		The educator keeps an overall grade for the clickers over the course of the semester based on accuracy in answering questions. The educator wants to determine if students in their first two years perform differently than students in their third or fourth year.
		The educator asks students if they like or don't like using the clicker, and they want to determine if students in their first two years have different opinions on the clickers than students in their third or fourth year.
		The educator keeps an overall grade for the clickers over the course of the semester based on accuracy in answering questions. The educator wants to determine if students get a score on average of at least 75% on their overall clicker grade.
		The educator gives the clickers out at the beginning of the semester with no clicker training. After 5 lectures, clicker training is introduced, and then the educator gives another 5 lectures. The overall grade for the clickers in the first 5 lectures and the second 5 lectures is recorded based on accuracy in answering questions, and the educator would like to determine if the clicker training led to improvement in clicker grades

Answer 1

In the two-sample t-test, we have two independent samples and we test if the two samples have a different mean.

Here we will assess each of the situations and find out if the two-sample t-test is applicable.

i) Here the educator wants to test if the majority of students enjoy using clickers thus we should we doing a one-sample proportion test.

ii) Here the educator wants to test if students in their first two years perform differently than students in their third or fourth year. Thus we are testing the difference in means for two different samples. Thus here we need a two-sample t-test.

iii) Here the educator wants to test if students in their first two years have different opinions on the clickers than students in their third or fourth year. Thus here we need a two-sample proportion test.

iv) Here the educator wants to test if students get a score on average of at least 75% on their overall clicker grade. Thus we will be using a one-sample test.

v) This is a paired sample thus we need to use a paired sample t-test here.

Thus only the third option is correct.