[closed]

Do you mean that you fit a simple linear model, of the form below?

ability = b0 + b1*endorsements + error

And when you say t-test, are you saying you did a t-test for the parameter b1?

Usually when people refer to a t-test, without more information, they are saying they tested the difference of means between two groups. (or one mean against a number).

See, for example, the Wikipedia article on t-tests: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student's_t-test

[minimaxir]

> Do you mean that you fit a simple linear model, of the form below?

That would be the form of the best-fit line in the scatterplot. (and it would make sense to assume that the t-test refers to b1 != 0, as there is only one group)

[closed]

Edit: on second thought, you're probably right. I think I was too off the cuff in responding. Left original response below.

If by best fit you mean minimizing sum squared error, that's fair.

But to be sure, if someone said t-test, and they only had one group, I would first guess they were doing a one-sample t-test.

Even with two dependent variables and one group, I would think over whether they did a dependent t-test.

I figured it was a simple linear model (in this case a correlation) because they mentioned that they tested the relationship, and it makes sense, but it seems important to sanity check the use of the term t-test, which can be highly ambiguous (and I have seen used in very surprising ways).