Question

Conventional wisdom says asprin can reduce fever. A study is conducted to see how effective aspirin is in reducing temperature in children. A sample of 6 children suffering from influenza had their temperatures taken immediately before and 1 hour after administration of aspirin. The results are given below. We would like to conduct a paired differences t-test for this situation. The data follow.

Patient	Temperature Before	Temperature After	Difference
1	100.7	98.4	2.3
2	103.7	101.6	2.1
3	101.7	99.9	1.8
4	102.7	100.6	2.1
5	101.7	99.9	1.8
6	100.7	97.7	3.0
Mean	101.9	99.7	2.2
Std. Dev.	1.2	1.4	0.4

Note: Children under 17 should not be given aspirin unless advised by a physician, due to the possibility of Reyes Syndrome, a disease affecting the liver and brain.

Calculate the appropriate test statistic of a matched pairs t-test for this data to see if taking aspirin will reduce a child's fever. You may assume the necessary conditions hold.

Give your answer to 2 decimal places.

Answer 1

The statistical software output for this problem is:

Paired T hypothesis test: HD 1 Mean of the difference between Temperature Before and Temperature After Ho HD 0 HA HD 0 Hypothesis test results: P-value Difference Std. Err Mean DF T-Stat Temperature Before Temperature After 2.1833333 0.18150605 5 12.028984 <0.0001

Hence,

Test statistic = 12.03