Hello everyone, I'm a new member (with low degree of statistical understanding) hoping someone can clarify a question for me.
We run laboratory testing and often check sets of data for significant difference to confirm that test results are not changing. I usually get a sample to be tested 6 times and then later get the same sample repeated 6 times again. I then compare the 2 sets of 6 data results by t-test and get a p score telling me if the 2 sets of results are significantly different or not. As I say - this is done using replicate analysis of the same sample so sets of results would be similar to e.g. set 1 (2.33, 2.45, 2.38, 2.44, 2.51, 2.40) versus set 2 of (2.44, 2.36, 2.48, 2.34, 2.50)
My question is can a t-test function be allied to sets of data that have much wider ranges of data e.g. could a set of data like (11.21, 15.24, 9.79, 0.74) be compared using the t-test to set containing (12.22, 24.48, 8.59, 14.34) or is it not appropriate ?
We run laboratory testing and often check sets of data for significant difference to confirm that test results are not changing. I usually get a sample to be tested 6 times and then later get the same sample repeated 6 times again. I then compare the 2 sets of 6 data results by t-test and get a p score telling me if the 2 sets of results are significantly different or not. As I say - this is done using replicate analysis of the same sample so sets of results would be similar to e.g. set 1 (2.33, 2.45, 2.38, 2.44, 2.51, 2.40) versus set 2 of (2.44, 2.36, 2.48, 2.34, 2.50)
My question is can a t-test function be allied to sets of data that have much wider ranges of data e.g. could a set of data like (11.21, 15.24, 9.79, 0.74) be compared using the t-test to set containing (12.22, 24.48, 8.59, 14.34) or is it not appropriate ?