The F Distribution and the F-Ratio Quiz

PDF page 753: The distribution used for the hypothesis test is a new one. It is called the F distribution, named after Sir Ronald Fisher, an English statistician. The F statistic is a ratio (a fraction). There are two sets of degrees of freedom; one for the numerator and one for the denominator. For example, if F follows an F distribution and the number of degrees of freedom for the numerator is four, and the number of degrees of freedom for the denominator is ten, then F ~ F4,10. NOTE The F distribution is derived from the Student's t-distribution. The values of the F distribution are squares of the corresponding values of the t-distribution. One-Way ANOVA expands the t-test for comparing more than two groups. The scope of that derivation is beyond the level of this course. It is preferable to use ANOVA when there are more than two groups instead of performing pairwise t-tests because performing multiple tests introduces the likelihood of making a Type 1 error.

PDF page 753: The distribution used for the hypothesis test is a new one. It is called the F distribution, named after Sir Ronald Fisher, an English statistician. The F statistic is a ratio (a fraction). There are two sets of degrees of freedom; one for the numerator and one for the denominator. For example, if F follows an F distribution and the number of degrees of freedom for the numerator is four, and the number of degrees of freedom for the denominator is ten, then F ~ F4,10. NOTE The F distribution is derived from the Student's t-distribution. The values of the F distribution are squares of the corresponding values of the t-distribution. One-Way ANOVA expands the t-test for comparing more than two groups. The scope of that derivation is beyond the level of this course. It is preferable to use ANOVA when there are more than two groups instead of performing pairwise t-tests because performing multiple tests introduces the likelihood of making a Type 1 error.

PDF page 753: The distribution used for the hypothesis test is a new one. It is called the F distribution, named after Sir Ronald Fisher, an English statistician. The F statistic is a ratio (a fraction). There are two sets of degrees of freedom; one for the numerator and one for the denominator. For example, if F follows an F distribution and the number of degrees of freedom for the numerator is four, and the number of degrees of freedom for the denominator is ten, then F ~ F4,10. NOTE The F distribution is derived from the Student's t-distribution. The values of the F distribution are squares of the corresponding values of the t-distribution. One-Way ANOVA expands the t-test for comparing more than two groups. The scope of that derivation is beyond the level of this course. It is preferable to use ANOVA when there are more than two groups instead of performing pairwise t-tests because performing multiple tests introduces the likelihood of making a Type 1 error.

PDF page 753: The distribution used for the hypothesis test is a new one. It is called the F distribution, named after Sir Ronald Fisher, an English statistician. The F statistic is a ratio (a fraction). There are two sets of degrees of freedom; one for the numerator and one for the denominator. For example, if F follows an F distribution and the number of degrees of freedom for the numerator is four, and the number of degrees of freedom for the denominator is ten, then F ~ F4,10. NOTE The F distribution is derived from the Student's t-distribution. The values of the F distribution are squares of the corresponding values of the t-distribution. One-Way ANOVA expands the t-test for comparing more than two groups. The scope of that derivation is beyond the level of this course. It is preferable to use ANOVA when there are more than two groups instead of performing pairwise t-tests because performing multiple tests introduces the likelihood of making a Type 1 error.

PDF page 753: To calculate the F ratio, two estimates of the variance are made.

PDF page 753: sample sizes are the same.). If the samples are different sizes, the variance between samples is weighted to account for the different sample sizes. The variance is also called variation due to treatment or explained variation.

PDF page 753: variance). When the sample sizes are different, the variance within samples is weighted. The variance is also called the variation due to error or unexplained variation.

PDF page 753: • SSbetween = the sum of squares that represents the variation among the different samples

PDF page 753: • SSwithin = the sum of squares that represents the variation within samples that is due to chance.

PDF page 753: To find a "sum of squares" means to add together squared quantities that, in some cases, may be weighted. We used sum of squares to calculate the sample variance and the sample standard deviation in Descriptive Statistics. MS means " mean square." MSbetween is the variance between groups, and MSwithin is the variance within groups. Calculation of Sum of Squares and Mean Square

PDF page 753: • Equation for errors within samples (df's for the denominator): dfwithin = n – k

PDF page 754: within If MSbetween and MSwithin estimate the same value (following the belief that H0 is true), then the F-ratio should be approximately equal to one. Mostly, just sampling errors would contribute to variations away from one. As it turns out, MSbetween consists of the population variance plus a variance produced from the differences between the samples. MSwithin is an estimate of the population variance. Since variances are always positive, if the null hypothesis is false, MSbetween will generally be larger than MSwithin.Then the F-ratio will be larger than one. However, if the population effect is small, it is not unlikely that MSwithin will be larger in a given sample. The foregoing calculations were done with groups of different sizes. If the groups are the same size, the calculations simplify somewhat and the F-ratio can be written as: F-Ratio Formula when the groups are the same size 2 n ⋅ s ̄ x