Alan McLean wrote: > > Radford and I effectively made two different assumptions - I that the > population of interest was the population measured, he that it it was > wider than the population measured. With my assumption the t test is > not relevant; with his, its relevance depends on whether the > (sub)population measured can reasonably be considered a random sample > from the population of interest.
I'd disagree with the last bit, whether the sample can be considered random would not influence my view as to whether it is relevant. I think I'd rather factor it into my interpretation of the test - specifically (in most cases) our samples are not random, but might be representative enough or random enough for not to greatly detract from any conclusions we make. This seems to be what people try and do during peer review. Thom . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
