Abstract
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This article concludes that Student’s t statistic is a forgiving or safe statistic in the presence of unequal variances. More generally, for every weighted mean (Equation presented), there is a corresponding weighted sum of deviations squared Sw, 02, which together with the mean defines a safe Student-like test statistic. These results imply that the choice of weights in (Equation presented) need not be all that precise, provided a compensation is made via Sw, 0. Such is the case in the example considered. © 1982 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.