TINV

Microsoft Office Excel 2003

See Also

Returns the t-value of the Student's t-distribution as a function of the probability and the degrees of freedom.

Syntax

TINV(probability,degrees_freedom)

Probability    is the probability associated with the two-tailed Student's t-distribution.

Degrees_freedom    is the number of degrees of freedom with which to characterize the distribution.

Remarks

  • If either argument is nonnumeric, TINV returns the #VALUE! error value.
  • If probability < 0 or if probability > 1, TINV returns the #NUM! error value.
  • If degrees_freedom is not an integer, it is truncated.
  • If degrees_freedom < 1, TINV returns the #NUM! error value.
  • TINV returns that value t, such that P(|X| > t) = probability where X is a random variable that follows the t-distribution and P(|X| > t) = P(X < -t or X > t).
  • A one-tailed t-value can be returned by replacing probability with 2*probability. For a probability of 0.05 and degrees of freedom of 10, the two-tailed value is calculated with TINV(0.05,10), which returns 2.28139. The one-tailed value for the same probability and degrees of freedom can be calculated with TINV(2*0.05,10), which returns 1.812462.

    Note   In some tables, probability is described as (1-p).

    Given a value for probability, TINV seeks that value x such that TDIST(x, degrees_freedom, 2) = probability. Thus, precision of TINV depends on precision of TDIST. TINV uses an iterative search technique. If the search has not converged after 100 iterations, the function returns the #N/A error value.

Example

The example may be easier to understand if you copy it to a blank worksheet.

ShowHow?

  1. Create a blank workbook or worksheet.
  2. Select the example in the Help topic. Do not select the row or column headers.

    Selecting an example from Help

    Selecting an example from Help

  3. Press CTRL+C.
  4. In the worksheet, select cell A1, and press CTRL+V.
  5. To switch between viewing the results and viewing the formulas that return the results, press CTRL+` (grave accent), or on the Tools menu, point to Formula Auditing, and then click Formula Auditing Mode.
 
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A B
Data Description
0.054645 Probability associated with the two-tailed Student's t-distribution
60 Degrees of freedom
Formula Description (Result)
=TINV(A2,A3) t-value of the Student's t-distribution for the terms above (1.959997462)