According to the Central Limit Theorem, the sampling distribution of a statistic (e.g. sample mean) will follow a normal distribution, as long as the sample size is sufficiently large.
But sample sizes are sometimes small, and often we do not know the standard deviation of the population. When either of these problems occur, statisticians rely on the distribution of the \(\text {t-statistic (t-score)}\) with the degrees of freedom \((n-1)\),
\(t = \frac {\bar x - \mu}{s/\sqrt n}\)
Degrees of Freedom
\(\text {t-distribution }\) is determined by its degrees of freedom. The degrees of freedom refers to the number of independent observations in a set of data.
Properties of the \(\text {t-Distribution:}\)
- The mean of the distribution is equal to \(0\).
- The variance is equal to \(\frac {v}{v-2}\), where \(v\) is the DF and \(v \ge 2\).