FIELD STUDIES COUNCIL – Flatford Mill
Student’s t-test for difference
The Student’s t-test can be used if you wish to test for a statistically significant DIFFERENCE between the
MEANS of data collected from different areas.
1.) Null Hypothesis (Ho):…………………………………………………………………………………………..……………….....................
..............………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….....................
2.) Alternative Hypothesis (H1):………………………………………………………………………………….....................................
...............…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………....................
Let’s start with Standard deviation:
If we take a large set of measurements of something e.g. the length of Ivy leaves in a woodland and plot
out a frequency histogram, then we should get a nice symmetrical bell-shaped distribution like the graph
below. The mean value will lie in the most frequent size class and the other values are equally divided
either side of this value. This is a normal distribution.
The Standard deviation is to do with the
amount that each individual measurement
is deviated away from the mean.
Why bother with Standard deviation?
8 10
7 9
8
6
7
5
6
4 5
3 4
2 3
2
1
1
0 1
By definition about 67% of all the individual measurements within a set of data lie within the range of the
mean plus or minus one standard deviation (mean ± 1s) and 95% in the range plus or minus two standard
deviations (mean ± 2s). So if a set of data has a large standard deviation then the data are widely spread
around the mean (1). In contrast a set of measurements with a small standard deviation are more tightly
clumped around their mean (2)
Field Studies Council, Flatford Mill. Registered charity no. 313664
FIELD STUDIES COUNCIL – Flatford Mill
Student’s t-test for difference
3. Calculate the standard deviation.
The formula is:
S = √ Σ (xn -–1x)² But this is pretty scary! So can put it in a table to
simplify by using the calculators.......
Mean site 1: Standard deviation site 1:
Mean site 2: Standard deviation site 2:
Now we have values for the means of each data set and we have the Standard deviation (s) and we also
know how many measurements are in each sample (n); we can substitute all these values into the t-test
equation to see if we have a significant difference or not.
4. Calculate t to 2 d.p.
test statistic
mean
S = standard deviation
t=
n = number of values
…………………..
Now we have our t value of .................... we need to know if it is significant or not. In order to discover
this we must compare it to a critical value. Our critical value depends on:
Degrees of freedom = (n1 – 1) + (n2 – 1)
Where n = number of values in each data set Degrees of freedom = ………………...
Level of significance / certainty 5%/P = 0.05 or 1%/P=0.01
5. Look up the critical value in the table:
Field Studies Council, Flatford Mill. Registered charity no. 313664
FIELD STUDIES COUNCIL – Flatford Mill
Student’s t-test for difference
Combined Critical Critical 6. Conclusions:
degrees value Value
of at 5% at 1%
freedom
of t
5 2.571 4.032
6 2.447 3.707
7 2.365 3.499
8 2.306 3.355
9 2.262 3.250
10 2.228 3.169
11 2.201 3.106
12 2.179 3.055
13 2.160 3.012
14 2.145 2.977
15 2.132 2.947
16 2.120 2.921
17 2.110 2.898
18 2.101 2.878
19 2.093 2.861
20 2.086 2.845
21 2.080 2.831
22 2.074 2.819
23 2.069 2.807
24 2.064 2.797
25 2.060 2.787 Application Questions:
26 2.056 2.779
27 2.052 2.771 A student collected the following data sets:
28 2.049 2.763 a) Leaf length with increasing distance from a trampled path
29 2.045 2.756
b) Species diversity in open and closed canopy woodland
30 2.042 2.750
c) Leaf length of Brambles on North and South side of Woodland edge
1. Which is the only investigation in which the data collected could be analysed with a student’ t-test?
2. Write a suitable Null hypothesis for this investigation
Look at the two sets of data and fill in the gap:
Mean 36.0 45.5
Standard deviation 3.0 0.5
95% of the data is between 30.0 – 42.0
Looking at the data available here do you expect there to be a statistically significant difference or not?
Field Studies Council, Flatford Mill. Registered charity no. 313664
