Introduction
Student’s t-tests are parametric tests based on the Student’s or t-distribution. Student’s distribution is named in honor of William Sealy Gosset (1876–1937), who first determined it in 1908. Gosset, “one of the most original minds in contemporary science” (Fisher 1939), was one of the best Oxford graduates in chemistry and mathematics in his generation. In 1899, he took up a job as a brewer at Arthur Guinness Son & Co, Ltd in Dublin, Ireland. Working for the Guinness brewery, he was interested in quality control based on small samples in various stages of the production process. Since Guinness prohibited its employees from publishing any papers to prevent disclosure of confidential information, Gosset had published his work under the pseudonym “Student” (the other possible pseudonym he was offered by the managing director La Touche was “Pupil,” see Box 1987, p. 49), and his identity was not known for some time after the publication of his most famous achievements, so...
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References and Further Reading
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Kalpić, D., Hlupić, N., Lovrić, M. (2011). Student’s t-Tests. In: Lovric, M. (eds) International Encyclopedia of Statistical Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04898-2_641
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