Objectives

P value and statistical significance:

The two-tailed P value equals 0.4457
By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be not statistically significant.

Confidence interval:
The mean of female employees minus male employees equals 0.0571
95% confidence interval of this difference: From -0.1007 to 0.2150

Intermediate values used in calculations:

t = 0.7886
df = 12
standard error of difference = 0.072

Learn more:
GraphPad's web site includes portions of the manual for GraphPad Prism that can help you learn
statistics. First, review the meaning of P values and confidence intervals . Then learn how to
interpret results from an unpaired or paired t test. These links include GraphPad's popular analysis
checklists .

Review your data:

Group female employees male employees
Mean 3.6900 3.6329
SD 0.1482 0.1216
SEM 0.0560 0.0460
N 7 7

Content

Unpaired t test results

P value and statistical significance:
The two-tailed P value equals 0.0446
By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be statistically significant.

Confidence interval:
The mean of female employees minus male employees equals 0.1712
95% confidence interval of this difference: From 0.0048 to 0.3377

Intermediate values used in calculations:

t = 2.2061
df = 14
standard error of difference = 0.078

Learn more:
GraphPad's web site includes portions of the manual for GraphPad Prism that can help you learn
statistics. First, review the meaning of P values and confidence intervals . Then learn how to
 interpret results from an unpaired or paired t test. These links include GraphPad's popular analysis
checklists .

Review your data:

Group female employees male employees
Mean 3.7688 3.5975
SD 0.1759 0.1313
SEM 0.0622 0.0464
N 8 8

Language

P value and statistical significance:

The two-tailed P value equals 0.1150
By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be not statistically significant.

Confidence interval:
The mean of female employees minus male employees equals 0.1220
95% confidence interval of this difference: From -0.0371 to 0.2811

Intermediate values used in calculations:

t = 1.7679
df = 8
standard error of difference = 0.069

Learn more:
GraphPad's web site includes portions of the manual for GraphPad Prism that can help you learn
statistics. First, review the meaning of P values and confidence intervals . Then learn how to
interpret results from an unpaired or paired t test. These links include GraphPad's popular analysis
checklists .

Review your data:

Group female employees male employees
Mean 3.8660 3.7440
SD 0.1387 0.0677
SEM 0.0620 0.0303
N 5 5

Evaluation

P value and statistical significance:

The two-tailed P value equals 0.1450
By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be not statistically significant.
Confidence interval:
The mean of female employees minus male employees equals -0.0950
95% confidence interval of this difference: From -0.2260 to 0.0360

Intermediate values used in calculations:

t = 1.5235
df = 18
standard error of difference = 0.062

Learn more:
GraphPad's web site includes portions of the manual for GraphPad Prism that can help you learn
statistics. First, review the meaning of P values and confidence intervals . Then learn how to
interpret results from an unpaired or paired t test. These links include GraphPad's popular analysis
checklists .

Review your data:

Group female employees male employees
Mean 3.5680 3.6630
SD 0.1434 0.1354
SEM 0.0453 0.0428
N 10 10
Associated Topics || Dr. Math Home || Search Dr. Math
T-Tests, P-Values, and Statistical Significance
Date: 03/18/2004 at 22:15:49
From: Matt
Subject: What does the t test tell you?

I am doing a lab report comparing two different samples of fish. For

the results the teacher wants a t-test. I have calculated it and lots
of other information. Could you tell me what this information means
and how I interpret it?

What does the t-value and two-tailed P-value tell me and how do they
compare to each other? Is this information "significant" enough to
say that variable 2 came from the same family as variable 1?

Here is my data:

Variable 1 Variable 2
Mean 0.562 0.09152
Variance 0.00097 0.003081962
Observations 5 5
Pooled Variance 0.002025981
Hypothesized Mean Difference 0
df 8
t Stat 16.52697943
P(T<=t) one-tail 9.06766E-08
t Critical one-tail 1.85954832
P(T<=t) two-tail 1.81353E-07
t Critical two-tail 2.306005626

Date: 03/19/2004 at 09:24:34

From: Doctor Achilles
Subject: Re: What does the t test tell you?

Hi Matt,

Thanks for writing to Dr. Math.

A t-test tells you the probability that two sets of values come from
different groups. Using a one-tailed P-value assumes you already know
before you even see the values which group should be larger and which
should be smaller. Since this is usually not true, you should almost
always use a two-tailed test.

Let's say, for example, that I have the following hypothesis: "The
average age of trees in Yellowstone National Park is significantly
different than the average age of trees in Yosemite National Park."
How would I test that (let's assume that I have a way to accurately
determine the age of a tree without cutting it down)? I don't have
the resources to check the ages of all the trees in each park, so I
will take a small random sample from each park and then use a t-test
to compare them.
A two-tailed P-value of 0.6, for example, would mean that there is a
0.6 (or 60%) chance that the two sets of values come from the same
group. In other words, there is a 60% chance that the average age of
the trees in each park is the same, and that whatever difference I
may have seen in my random sample can be explained by the fact that I
only sampled a small portion of the trees. If I got a P-value of
0.6, I would say that there is no significant difference between the
ages of the two populations.

A two-tailed P-value of 0.1 would mean that there is a 0.1 (or 10%
chance) that the two sets come from the same group. In this case,
there is a pretty good chance that the ages of the two populations is
different. However, in order to be on the safe side, it is
traditional in science to say that a P-value of 0.1 is NOT
significant. Why? Because if 0.1 were considered significant, then
10% of all scientific findings would be false. So even if I got a P-
value of 0.1, I couldn't say anything for sure, the most I could say
is that more study is probably required.

The traditionally accepted P-value for something to be significant is

P < 0.05. So if there is less than a 5% chance that two sets came
from the same group, then it is considered a significant difference
between the two sets.

A t-test computes a "t-value". There is a complicated mathematical

relationship that I don't know off the top of my head between a t-
value and a P-value that depends on the size of the samples (and one
or two other variables). Larger t-values translate into smaller P-
values. So the larger the t-value is the more likely the difference
is significant. A "critical t-value" is the minimum t-value you need
in order to have P < 0.05. If your t-value is greater than or equal
to the critical t-value, then you will have a significant difference.

In your problem, your critical t-value is 2.306005626, your t-value

is 16.52697943. So, your t-value is greater than the critical t-
value, therefore the difference between the two sets is significant.

This is confirmed by the fact that your two-tailed P-value is

1.81353E-07 or 0.000000181353; this is extremely small (much less
than 0.05).

I would call the difference between these values "highly significant".

(If I were you, I'd go back and recheck that you entered all the
values correctly, since this difference is much more significant than
one usually gets with only 5 samples in each set; but if you did, then
congratulations: you have found a big effect of whatever you were
testing!)

I hope this explanation is helpful. If anything is unclear, or you'd

like to talk about some of this more, please write back.

- Doctor Achilles, The Math Forum

http://mathforum.org/dr.math/
 Associated Topics:
College Statistics
High School Statistics