Write and . The normal-sample likelihood is
Without the mean restriction, its maximum has and . Under the null, the maximizing variance is . Substituting them gives the generalized likelihood-ratio test statistic
where and . Assume ; almost surely for positive population variance.
The ratio decreases strictly as increases, so rejecting for small is equivalent to rejecting for large . Under , has Student's t-distribution with degrees of freedom. Therefore the exact size- rule is
This is the two-sided Student's t-test. Equivalently reject when . No large-sample chi-squared approximation is needed for this normal-mean likelihood ratio with unknown variance.
Write , , and . The normal likelihood is proportional to . Its unrestricted maximizers are , . Under the null the variance maximizer is . Substitution gives the generalized likelihood-ratio test statistic
The ratio decreases as increases, so the likelihood-ratio rejection region is two-sided in . Under , is standard normal and is independent chi-squared with degrees of freedom. Independence follows by resolving the isotropic Gaussian sample vector into its projection on the constant vector and its orthogonal complement. Hence has the exact Student t-distribution with degrees of freedom.
For a chosen significance level , compute the sample mean and the sample standard deviation with denominator , and reject precisely when
Equivalently, report the two-sided -value . This requires and positive population variance; holds almost surely under that model. The nuisance variance is removed by the exact null distribution, so one should not substitute a normal critical value or a large-sample chi-squared approximation. This is the normal-mean likelihood ratio with unknown variance.