Question 880:

Asked on March 24, 2011

Tags: t-statistic , F-statistic

1

Answer:

No answer provided yet.Both statistics are used to test the differences between means. The F-ratio is used in an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) when comparing more than 2 means. The t-statistic is used when comparing only 2 means in the t-test. This makes the t-test a special case of the ANOVA. Most importantly, the F-ratio is equal to the t-statistic squared. So if you have a t-statistic you can get an F by squaring it. If you have an F, you can get the t by taking the square root.

Both require a number of degrees of freedom (which is tied to the sample size for the t-statistics).   The F-ratio has two degrees of freedom, one based on the total sample size and the other based on the total number of groups being compared.