Homework for Paired T-test

You will use this spreadsheet that has the phonetic data for all the members of the class's formant frequencies and vowel lengths. Remember that the words consisted of near identical pairs of words that only differed in whether they ended in [t] or [d]. The question is whether the [t] or [d] influences the length of the vowel. To determine this you'll need to perform a paired t-test. Open up the spreadsheet and this online t-test calculator.

Make sure that the radio buttons marked “Enter or paste up to 2000 rows” and “Paired t test” are marked. From the spreadsheet, copy the column containing the lengths of the words ending in [d] into the first column of the calculator and the column with the lengths of the corresponding words ending in [t] into the second column. Click “calculate now” and report on the results you get. What is the mean vowel length before /t/ and before /d/? Are they significantly different? How do you know?