Now input the cells containing your data.
In the menu box, click in the “Variable 1
Range” box and then use the cursor to
select the column containing the data for
trial 1. As you select the cells in your
spreadsheet, the range should also appear
in the menu box window. Repeat the
process for “Variable 2 Range” and your
other column of data. You can change the
output options and value for alpha if
appropriate, but the default alpha of 0.05
is usually fine for your purposes. When
everything looks good, click “OK”. You will
now see the results of your statistical test
(unless you selected otherwise, by default
the results will open in a new worksheet).
Among the variables that appear in the results sheet (left), depending
on your experiment the most important result is the p-value,
highlighted at left in the pink cell. Since you set your alpha value at
0.05, if the p-value is less than 0.05, you can say that there is a
statistically significant difference between the means of your two trials.
Note that in this example, p = 2.6 x 10
-16
, which is < 0.05, so the
difference is significant.