41.3 One Sample T-Test (.NET, C#, CSharp, VB, Visual Basic, F#)
Class OneSampleTTest determines
whether a sample from a normal distribution with unknown standard deviation
could have a given mean. For example, suppose we wish to determine whether
the self-esteem of children from a particular school differ from average,
given a known population value of 3.9 on
the Rosenberg Self
As described Section 41.1,
all hypothesis test classes provide two paths for constructing instances
of that type: a parameter-based method and a data-based method. Thus,
you can construct a OneSampleTTest
object by explicitly specifying a sample mean (
), sample standard deviation
(
), sample size
(
), and population
mean (
), like so:
Code Example – C# t-test
double xbar = 4.0408;
double s = .6542;
int n = 113;
double mu0 = 3.9;
var test = new OneSampleTTest( xbar, s, n, mu0 );
Code Example – VB t-test
Dim XBar As Double = 4.0408
Dim S As Double = 0.6542
Dim N As Integer = 113
Dim Mu0 As Double = 3.9
Dim Test As New OneSampleTTest(XBar, S, N, Mu0)
Or by supplying a set of sample data, and the necessary population parameters. For instance, if the sample data is in column 3 of DataFrame df:
Code Example – C# t-test
double mu0 = 3.9;
var test = new OneSampleTTest( df[3], mu0 );
Code Example – VB t-test
Dim Mu0 As Double = 3.9
Dim Test As New OneSampleTTest(DF(3), Mu0)
In this case, the sample mean, standard deviation, and size are calculated from the given data.
In addition to the properties common to all hypothesis test objects (Section 41.1), a OneSampleTTest object provides the following read-only properties:
● Xbar gets the sample mean.
● S gets the sample standard deviation.
● N gets the sample size.
● Mu0 gets the population mean.
● DegreesOfFreedom gets the degrees of freedom.
By default, a OneSampleTTest
object performs a two-sided hypothesis test (
) with 
. Non-default test parameters
can be specified at the time of construction using constructor overloads,
or after construction using the provided Alpha
and Type properties, like so:
Code Example – C# t-test
test.Alpha = 0.05;
Code Example – VB t-test
Test.Alpha = 0.05
Once you've constructed and configured a OneSampleTTest object, you can access the various test results using the provided properties, as described in Section 41.1:
Code Example – C# t-test
Console.WriteLine( "t-statistic = " + test.Statistic );
Console.WriteLine( "deg of freedom = " + test.DegreesOfFreedom );
Console.WriteLine( "p-value = " + test.P );
Console.WriteLine( "reject the null hypothesis? " + test.Reject);
Code Example – VB t-test
Console.WriteLine("t-statistic = " & Test.Statistic)
Console.WriteLine("deg of freedom = " & Test.DegreesOfFreedom)
Console.WriteLine("p-value = " & Test.P)
Console.WriteLine("reject the null hypothesis? " & Test.Reject)
The output is:
t-statistic = 2.28786996397591
deg of freedom = 112
p-value = 0.0240223660991041
reject the null hypothesis? True
This indicates that we can reject the null hypotheses
(
). We can conclude
that the children have self-esteem scores significantly different than
average.
Finally, remember that the ToString() method returns a formatted string representation of the complete test results:
One Sample t Test
-----------------
Sample mean = 4.0408
Sample standard deviation = 0.6542
Sample size = 113
Population mean = 3.9
Computed t statistic: 2.28786996397591, df = 112
Hypothesis type: two-sided
Null hypothesis: sample mean = population mean
Alt hypothesis: sample mean != population mean
P-value: 0.0240223660991041
REJECT the null hypothesis for alpha = 0.05
0.95 confidence interval: 3.91886249658971 4.16273750341029