N: what it means and how to read it
In the report: N — The number of valid values in the group of the row.
How to read it
Compare it with your sample: a small group makes the test weak.
In plain words
A teacher wanted to know whether 6 students from the school choir scored higher than the 40 other students. She looked at N for each group and got 6 and 40. Now she can see that the choir group is tiny. With only 6 students, even a gap of 10 points could easily be luck. The same gap between two groups of 40 would be hard to put down to chance alone. So she always writes N next to the test result, to show how many students stand behind it. In a before-and-after test, N also shows how many went down, went up or stayed the same.
Example
The cell with N is selected in each report; point at a label to see its note.
- — the sample data (50 rows) the examples use
- —
=STATS_CROSSTABS(Data!A1:T51, "gender", "group") - —
=STATS_CHI2(Data!A1:T51, "gender", "group") - —
=STATS_CRAMER(Data!A1:T51, "gender", "group")
Where you see it
STATS_CROSSTABS— Observed contingency table for a pair of categorical columns.STATS_CHI2— Pearson chi-square test for association between two categorical columns.STATS_CRAMER— Cramer's V effect size for association between two categorical columns.STATS_WILCOXON— Wilcoxon signed-rank test for two related measurements of the same rows (before / after) — the rank replacement for STATS_PAIRED when the differences are not normal.STATS_MANN_WHITNEY— Mann–Whitney U test for two independent samples — the rank replacement for STATS_INDEPENDENT when the data are not normal (see STATS_NORMALITY), are ranks or rating scales (1–5), or have outliers.STATS_KRUSKAL— Kruskal–Wallis test for two or more independent groups (usually three or more; for two it agrees with STATS_MANN_WHITNEY) — the rank replacement for STATS_ANOVA when the data are not normal, or are ranks or rating scales. Each selected column is a group, as in STATS_ANOVA; no column is dropped.
Related values
- Mean rank — The average rank of the values of the group; rank 1 is the smallest value of all groups together.
- Sum of ranks — The sum of the ranks of the values of the group.
- Negative ranks — Pairs where the second column is smaller than the first (the difference second − first is negative), as SPSS.
- Positive ranks — Pairs where the second column is larger than the first (the difference second − first is positive).
- Ties — Pairs where the two values are equal; they are left out of the test.
Get it in your sheet
One formula in a cell gives the whole report, N included. ALS Stats is a free add-on for Google Sheets™.
Install ALS Stats from Google Workspace Marketplace (opens in a new tab)