Standard Deviation of Calculated Results

1. Standard Deviation of a Sum and

Difference

Example:

?
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Standard Deviation of Calculated Results

2. Standard Deviation of a Product and a
quotient

Example:

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 2011 Pearson Education, Inc.

Comparing your results to others: Test of

Significance Is there a difference?
The null hypothesis:
There is no difference
between your value
and the reference.
The alternative
hypothesis: There is a
significant difference
between your value
and the reference.
Test the null
hypothesis!
hypothesis

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Students t test: Are there differences in the

methods?
First Case: When an accepted value is known.
The reference can represent the true mean
Assume the null hypothesis (exp ave = true mean).
Do this by calculating t.

Using a confidence level (95% usually) and degrees

of freedom (n-1), we find a critical t value. If tcalc > ttable,
then reject null and accept the alternate hypothesis.
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 2011 Pearson Education, Inc.

Example:
You are developing a procedure for determining traces of
copper in biological materials using wet digestion followed
by measurement by atomic absorption spectrophotometry.
In order to test the validity of the method, you obtain an
NIST orchard leaves standard reference material and
analyze this material. Five replicas are sampled and
analyzed , and the mean of the results is found to be 10.8
ppm with a standard deviation of 0.7 ppm. The listed
value is 11.7 ppm. Does your method give a statistically
correct value at the 95% confidence level?

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Case 2: Comparing means to each other

(no reference)
Set the null hypothesis (result 1 = result 2).
Modify the Students t test to show that
both values have uncertainty determine
a weighted average of the two results.

Now, what is needed here is the standard

deviation of the pooled mean.
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If two means are statistically the same, then

the difference should only be a small number
of standard deviations away.
Now, use this value to
get a calculated t value
to compare to the table.
Important: To obtain
ttable, go to the t table
and determine d.o.f.
(n1 + n2) 2

remember, if
tcalc > ttable, reject null.
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Summarize the Steps for

Comparing Two Experimental Means

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Example:
Two barrels of wine were analyzed for their alcohol content
to determine whether they were from different sources. On
the basis of six analyses, the average content of the first
barrel was established to be 12.61 % ethanol. Four
analyses of the second barrel gave a mean of 12.53%
alcohol. The 10 analyses yielded a pooled standard
deviation spooled of 0.070%. Do the data indicate a
difference between the wines?

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Two sets of data from different methods use

the paired Students t test
Find the difference between results in both
methods, then get the average of the differences.
Next find the stand dev of the differences.

Then calculate the stand dev of the average

differences and calculate a t value.

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Example:
You are developing a new analytical method for the
determination of blood urea nitrogen (BUN). You want to
determine whether your method differs significantly from a
standard one for analyzing a range of sample
concentrations expected to be found in a routine laboratory.
It has been ascertained that the two methods have
comparable precisions. Following are two sets of results for
a number of individual results.

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