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how to interpret t.test output

3 messages · Gardee, Somayya, Jeff Newmiller, Jim Lemon

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Hello for my project I am trying to write up my results from the paired t-test I conducted.
Please could someone help.

Thank you,
Somayya Gardee
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Perhaps someone could, but:

1) It is normal on public Internet mailing lists and forums to simply ask the actual question and let people respond if they know the answer, rather than asking for permission to ask.

2) You should read the Posting Guide for this mailing list... your question does not appear to fit the subject area for this mailing list, as it is about interpreting statistical computation results (statistics) rather than using R to obtain them (R). Perhaps try stats.stackexchange.com?
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Hi Somayya,
When you perform a t-test on two sets of numeric values, the answer
you get tells you how likely it is that those two sets of numbers came
from the same distribution. What most people are interested in is
whether the means of those two distributions are different. Let's see,
you seem to be with NHS in Scotland, so you are probably interested in
something like whether the mean reported severity of hangover is the
same for whisky as vodka in a sample of drinkers, controlling for
number of standard drinks of course. About all you can say from a
t-test is that those drinking one drink felt worse the next day _if_
the p value is small enough. Beware of doing lots of t-tests and
looking for <0.05.

Jim


On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 1:46 AM, Gardee, Somayya
<Somayya.Gardee at ggc.scot.nhs.uk> wrote: