Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello! I recently conducted an experiment in which I tested greywater for the concentrations of several chemical contaminants, purified the greywater using two different materials (activated alumina and zeolite), then tested for the chemical contaminants again in order to see effects.

I'm putting together my research paper, and I realized I'm in need of more statistics or ways of analyzing my data other than just averaging it and putting it in line graphs. Could you recommend some tests I could run on my data (chemical concentrations, before and after)? Thank you so much in advance!

Assuming you have N>1 (meaning you have more than one batch of greywater being tested in each condition, which you should), I think I would use a t-test to compare the average chemical concentration for each treatment group to the control, but taking into account the variance (a measure of the difference in concentration between batches treated the same).
However, if you want to compare the chemical concentrations of the zeolite to the alumina treatments as well as to the control, you would probably use an ANOVA.