statistics project help?

Question

I am doing my hypothesis on paper towels and applying nickels to see which one holds up. I have 2 brands of towels i tested. the bounty one held up more nickels and i was wondering what formula and things i should go about to further my project. Thanks.

Answer 1

One way to improve this would be to repeat the experiment 10 times for each brand, and then compare average number of nickels for each brand. If you want to try something a little more complex, you can test the hypothesis that the two means are the same by using a "t-test." This is a fairly simple test that requires three things: mean, sample size, and standard deviation.

Excel has a built-in function that calculates the t-test score: >tools >data analysis >t-test: paired two sample for means

Here's a link to a page that explains the t-test and how to calculate it:

http://helios.bto.ed.ac.uk/bto/statistics/tress4a.html