Thank you to all who replied to my query.
I now if there are other similar cases of "historical artifact" tests that
have been superceded. I just purchased the book "100 statistical tests", its
a bit overwhelming, I wouldn't mind witling it down to the most relevant
ones.
Cheers,
Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Eric Bohlman
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2001 4:44 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Student's t vs. z tests
Mark W. Humphries <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi,
> I am attempting to self-study basic multivariate statistics using
Kachigan's
> "Statistical Analysis" (which I find excellent btw).
> Perhaps someone would be kind enough to clarify a point for me:
> If I understand correctly the t test, since it takes into account degrees
of
> freedom, is applicable whatever the sample size might be, and has no
> drawbacks that I could find compared to the z test. Have I misunderstood
> something?
You're running into a historical artifact: in pre-computer days, using the
normal distribution rather than the t distribution reduced the size of the
tables you had to work with. Nowadays, a computer can compute a t
probability just as easily as a z probability, so unless you're in the
rare situation Karl mentioned, there's no reason not to use a t test.
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