Lab 0 - Statistics and Student’s t-test

Introduction

All experimental measurements are subject to random variation. No two measurements will be exactly the same. This variation can, for example, be caused by:

  1. Natural differences in a population

  2. Unpredictable fluctuations in experimental conditions

  3. Uncertainties inherent to the measurement device or system

In practice, this means that we will always be working with uncertain data. Due to cost or practicallity concerns, we will often be working with limited samples of uncertain data. In these situations, we can use Student’s t-test to test hypotheses about our data sets, and we can use t-values to establish confidence intervals for the true mean of our measured value.

In this lab, we will use the two-sample t-test to check for a possible manufacturing error in samples of glass marbles

Deliverables

For this assignment, you will submit a .pdf of your report to your HuskyCT section by Wednesday, Sept. 15th. You are limited to 3 pages (not including the title page, references, or appendix) and 2 figures. Additional data, figures, and information can be put in an appendix. The appendix will not be graded, but you may refer to it to explain data, methods, or other relevant information.