I just looked more carefully at your code. You are computing the unequal-variance (Welch) version of the t-test, so that's why there isn't a problem. Compare it with the equal-variance t-test, using the pooled variance estimate, which does have a problem, as below
-thomas tstat4 <- function() { n1 = 7 mu1 = 100 sigma1 = 25 n2 = 14 mu2 = 100 sigma2 = 10 x1 = rnorm(n1, mu1, sigma1) x1bar = mean(x1) s1 = sd(x1) x2 = rnorm(n2, mu2, sigma2) x2bar = mean(x2) s2 = sd(x2) t = ((x1bar - x2bar) - (mu1 - mu2))/sqrt(s1^2/n1 + s2^2/n2) t2= ((x1bar - x2bar) - (mu1 - mu2))/sqrt(((n1-1)*s1^2 + (n2-1)*s2^2)/(n1 +n2-2)*(1/n1+1/n2)) return(c(t,t2)) } tstats4 = replicate(10000, tstat4()) hist(tstats4[1,], breaks = "scott", prob = TRUE, xlim = c(-4, 4), ylim = c(0 , 0.4)) x = seq(-4, 4, length = 200) y = dt(x, df = 48) lines(x, y, type = "l", col = "red") hist(tstats4[2,], breaks = "scott", prob = TRUE, xlim = c(-4, 4), ylim = c(0 , 0.4)) x = seq(-4, 4, length = 200) y = dt(x, df = 48) lines(x, y, type = "l", col = "red") On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 12:28 PM, David Arnold <dwarnol...@suddenlink.net>wrote: > OK,although the variance ratio was already 2.25 to 1, tried sigma1=10, > sigma2=25, which makes the ratios of the variances 6.25 to 1. > > Still no change. See: > > http://msemac.redwoods.edu/~darnold/math15/R/chapter11/DistributionForTwoIndependentSamplesPartII.html > > D. > > > > -- > View this message in context: > http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/t-statistic-for-independent-samples-tp4664553p4664556.html > Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- Thomas Lumley Professor of Biostatistics University of Auckland [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.