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Nonparametric tests

Nature Methods volume 11, pages 467–468 (2014)Cite this article

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A Corrigendum to this article was published on 27 June 2014

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Nonparametric tests robustly compare skewed or ranked data.

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Figure 1: A sample can be easily tested against a reference value using the sign test without any assumptions about the population distribution.
Figure 2: Many nonparametric tests are based on ranks.
Figure 3: The Wilcoxon rank-sum test can outperform the t-test in the presence of discrete sampling or skew.

Change history

  • 23 May 2014

    In the version of this article initially published, the expression X (nX = 6) was incorrectly written as X (nY = 6). The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Martin Krzywinski is a staff scientist at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre.,

    Martin Krzywinski

  2. Naomi Altman is a Professor of Statistics at The Pennsylvania State University.,

    Naomi Altman

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  1. Martin Krzywinski
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  2. Naomi Altman
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Krzywinski, M., Altman, N. Nonparametric tests. Nat Methods 11, 467–468 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2937

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