[R] Power of t test for unequal variances?

[David Winsemius]

> On Dec 19, 2016, at 3:31 PM, David Winsemius <dwinsemius at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Dec 19, 2016, at 1:47 PM, Mauricio Cornejo via R-help <r-help at r-project.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Is there a function similar to stats::power.t.test that can handle unequal variances from two samples?
>> I noticed that stats::t.test has an argument for indicating whether or not to treat the two sample variances as equal.  Wondering why stats::power.t.test doesn’t have that option.
>> Thanks,Mauricio
>> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> Because R was developed by statisticians for statisticians and they assumed those other statisticians would know how to extend its functions when needed. But R-help is not advertised as the place to ask such questions when you don't have the statistical skills. (You might want to look at the code of `t.test` to see how you might construct appropriate arguments for `power.t.test` in the situation you imagine. Seems to me it should be fairly straightforward. `power.t.test` is built around the non-central t-distribution and solves a uniroot problem for the missing parameter among  n, delta, power, sd, and sig.level, given the other 4 parameters.)
> 

The other R-specific response might have been to teach you to use R's functions to do a bit of searching:

 ?available.packages
 old.opt <- options(available_packages_filters =
                               c("R_version",   "CRAN", "duplicates"))
 # saved options from prior state

 avail <- available.packages()
 names(avail)
NULL   # oops, not a list.
> str( avail)
 chr [1:9731, 1:17] "A3" "abbyyR" "abc" "ABCanalysis" ...
 - attr(*, "dimnames")=List of 2
  ..$ : chr [1:9731] "A3" "abbyyR" "abc" "ABCanalysis" ...
  ..$ : chr [1:17] "Package" "Version" "Priority" "Depends" ...
 colnames(avail)
#--- result---
 [1] "Package"               "Version"              
 [3] "Priority"              "Depends"              
 [5] "Imports"               "LinkingTo"            
 [7] "Suggests"              "Enhances"             
 [9] "License"               "License_is_FOSS"      
[11] "License_restricts_use" "OS_type"              
[13] "Archs"                 "MD5sum"               
[15] "NeedsCompilation"      "File"                 
[17] "Repository"        
#---------   


 avail[ grepl("pow" ,avail[ ,"Package"] , ignore.case=TRUE), "Package"]
                asypow           bivarRIpower           clusterPower 
              "asypow"         "bivarRIpower"         "clusterPower" 
             easypower                   fpow              longpower 
           "easypower"                 "fpow"            "longpower" 
                matpow               mnormpow               PharmPow 
              "matpow"             "mnormpow"             "PharmPow" 
                powell                  PoweR            Power2Stage 
              "powell"                "PoweR"          "Power2Stage" 
         powerAnalysis          powerbydesign   powerGWASinteraction 
       "powerAnalysis"        "powerbydesign" "powerGWASinteraction" 
              poweRlaw         powerMediation               powerpkg 
            "poweRlaw"       "powerMediation"             "powerpkg" 
             powerplus           powerSurvEpi              PowerTOST 
           "powerplus"         "powerSurvEpi"            "PowerTOST" 
              PowerUpR       rPowerSampleSize      twoStageGwasPower 
            "PowerUpR"     "rPowerSampleSize"    "twoStageGwasPower" 

A more usable result:

 names( avail[ grepl("pow" ,avail[ ,"Package"] , ignore.case=TRUE), "Package"] )
 [1] "asypow"               "bivarRIpower"        
 [3] "clusterPower"         "easypower"           
 [5] "fpow"                 "longpower"           
 [7] "matpow"               "mnormpow"            
 [9] "PharmPow"             "powell"              
[11] "PoweR"                "Power2Stage"         
[13] "powerAnalysis"        "powerbydesign"       
[15] "powerGWASinteraction" "poweRlaw"            
[17] "powerMediation"       "powerpkg"            
[19] "powerplus"            "powerSurvEpi"        
[21] "PowerTOST"            "PowerUpR"            
[23] "rPowerSampleSize"     "twoStageGwasPower"   

 options(old.opt)  # reset options to default values

So you may find additional user-contributed power-oriented packages.



> 
> -- 
> 
> David Winsemius
> Alameda, CA, USA
> 
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David Winsemius
Alameda, CA, USA