Analysing performance data (somewhat OT stat question; sorry)

[James Knowles]

I've been collecting performance data for different software 
configurations, and examining it in Octave.

It's been about 15 year since college stats class, so I'm rusty. Some 
data distributions are normal, and a simple t-test works great for 
testing whether there's a significant difference between configurations. 
Many are visually "obvious," but some are not. They all need to be 
documented, however.

Some are heavily skewed, scrunched up near zero. I don't remember what 
this kind of distribution is called. I do not remember what to use here 
to test a null-hypothesis of the two data populations being the same. 
(Yes, inaccurate terminology; sorry.)

Octave has alot built in, and I don't want to just plug data in randomly.

Thanks!



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