Example 2: A school district uses four different methods of teaching their students how to

read and wants to find out if there is any significant difference between the reading scores
achieved using the four methods. It creates a sample of 8 students for each of the four
methods. The reading scores achieved by the participants in each group are as follows:

Th
is time the p-value = .04466 < .05 = α, and so we reject the null hypothesis, and conclude
that there are significant differences between the methods (i.e. all four methods don’t have
the same mean).
Example 1: A marketing research firm tests the effectiveness of three new flavorings
for a leading beverage using a sample of 30 people, divided randomly into three
groups of 10 people each. Group 1 tastes flavor 1, group 2 tastes flavor 2 and group 3
tastes flavor 3. Each person is then given a questionnaire which evaluates how
enjoyable the beverage was. The scores are as in Figure 1. Determine whether there is
a perceived significant difference between the three flavorings.

Our null hypothesis is that any difference between the three flavors is due to chance.

H:μ =μ =μ
0 1 2 3

Based on the null hypothesis, the three group means are equal, and as we can see
from Figure 2, the group variances are roughly the same. Thus we can apply Theorem
1. To calculate F we first calculate SS and SS . Per Definition 1, SS is the sum of the
B W W

group SS (located in cells J7:J9). E.g. SS (in cell J7) can be calculated by the formula
j 1

=DEVSQ(A4:A13). SS (in cell F14) can therefore be calculated by the formula

W

=SUM(J7:J9).
The formula =DEVSQ(A4:C13) can be used to calculate SS (in cell F15), and then per
T

Property 2, SS = SS – SS = 492.8 – 415.4 = 77.4. By Definition 1, df = n – 1 = 30 – 1

B T W T

= 29, df = k – 1 = 3 – 1 = 2 and df = n – k = 30 – 3 = 27. Each SS value can be

B W

divided by the corresponding df value to obtain the MS values in cells H13:H15.

F = MSB / MS = 38.7/15.4 = 2.5. We now test F as we did in Two Sample Hypothesis
W

Testing of Variances, namely:

p-value = FDIST(F, df , df ) = FDIST(2.5, 2, 27) = .099596 > .05 = α
B W

F = FINV(α, df , df ) = FINV(.05, 2, 27) = 3.35 > 2.5 = F

crit B W

Either of these shows that we can’t reject the null hypothesis that all the means are
equal.

As explained above, the null hypothesis can be expressed by H : σ ≤ σ , and so the

0 B W

appropriate F test is a one-tail test, which is exactly what FDIST and FINV provide.
We can also calculate SS as the square of the deviations of the group means where
B

each group mean is weighted by its size. Since all the groups have the same size this
can be expressed as =DEVSQ(H7:H9)*F7.
SS can also be calculated as DEVSQ(G7:G9)/F7. This works as long as all the group
B

means have the same size.

Example 2: A school district uses four different methods of teaching their students how to
read and wants to find out if there is any significant difference between the reading scores
achieved using the four methods. It creates a sample of 8 students for each of the four
methods. The reading scores achieved by the participants in each group are as follows:

This time the p-value = .04466 < .05 = α, and so we reject the null hypothesis, and
conclude that there are significant differences between the methods (i.e. all four
methods don’t have the same mean).
Note that although the variances are not the same, as we will see shortly, they are
close enough to use ANOVA.