In: Statistics and Probability
Explain the statement below:
"The medical community is generally well informed about the use of proper statistical techniques used to analyze differences between means".
This test (as described below) assumes: (a) A normal (gaussian) distribution for the populations of the random errors, (b) there is no significant difference between the standard deviations of both population samples.
The two means and the corresponding standard deviations are calculated by using the following equations (nA and nB are the number of measurements in data set A and data set B, respectively):
Then, the pooled estimate of standard deviation sABis calculated:
Finally, the statistic texp(experimental t value) is calculated:
texpvalue is compared with the critical (theoretical) tth value corresponding to the given degree of freedom N (in the present case N = nA + nB - 2) and the confidence level chosen. Tables of critical t values can be found in any book of statistical analysis, as well as in many quantitative analysis textbooks. If texp>tththen H0 is rejected else H0 is retained.