Note that this is very similar in spirit to the t statistic — the main difference is that the denominator in the t statistic is based on the standard error of the mean, whereas the denominator in Cohe...Note that this is very similar in spirit to the t statistic — the main difference is that the denominator in the t statistic is based on the standard error of the mean, whereas the denominator in Cohen’s D is based on the standard deviation of the data. The ratio of these odds tells us about the relative likelihood of cancer between the two groups: The odds ratio of 23.22 tells us that the odds of cancer in smokers are roughly 23 times higher than never-smokers.