THE NON-PARAMETRIC

TESTS

Nelda Atibagos Nacion

Mathematics and Statistics Department
 Introduction:

When to use:

The investigator have no prior

knowledge about the distribution of the
sampled population and attempts to
guess the distribution which result to
serious error of the decision.
 Characteristic:

Nonparametric or distribution-free
statistics which does not identify or specify
the distribution of the population from
which the sample were drawn. A
nonparametric tests is a statistical
procedure in which no hypothesis is made
about a specific values of the population
parameters.
 Advantages and Disadvantages

1. Most nonparametric tests involve easy

computation, fewer mathematical details,
and easier to understand and to apply;

2. They may be used to test data that are

measured only on a nominal or ordinal
data;
Advantages and Disadvantages :

3. Many nonparametric tests make it possible to

work with small sample size, and very helpful to
the experimenter involved in a pilot studies or
dealing with rare types of characteristics;
4. In multi-sample cases, there are available
nonparametric tests for testing hypothesis
concerning observations drawn from several
different populations without checking the
assumptions about the population;
Advantages and Disadvantages :

5. Probability statements associated

with most nonparametric are exact
probabilities, which are independent of
the shape of the population.
Advantages and Disadvantages:
The major disadvantage of nonparametric
tests is that if in fact all parametric
assumptions were satisfied in the data the
values were of the required level of
measurement, nonparametric tests would
disregard much of the information contained
in the data. In general, nonparametric tests
when applied to data which are nearly
normal or nearly normal are not so
powerful as the equivalent parametric
method.
THE CHI-SQUARE TEST
 Chi-Square Applications

• The major characteristics of the chi-square

distribution are:

• It is positively skewed
• It is non-negative
• There is a family of chi-square distributions
 Let f0 and fe be the observed and
expected frequencies respectively.
H1: There is a H0: There is no
difference between the difference between the
observed and the observed and
expected frequencies. expected frequencies.
The test statistic   fo  fe  
2

is:  
2
 
fe

 
The critical value is a chi-square value with (k-1)
degrees of freedom, where k isGoodness-of-
the number of
categories
Fit Test: Equal
Expected
 Example 1
The following
information shows
Day of Week Number Absent
the number of
employees absent Monday 120
by day of the week Tuesday 45
at a large a Wednesday 60
manufacturing plant. Thursday 90
At the .01 level of Friday 130
significance, is there
Total 445
a difference in the
absence rate by day
of the week?
 Compute the value of chi-square and make a
Example
decision. 1 continued

Day Frequency Expected (fo – fe)2/fe

Monday 120 89 10.80
Tuesday 45 89 21.75
Wednesday 60 89 9.45
Thursday 90 89 0.01
Friday 130 89 18.89
Total 445 445 60.90
 Goodness-of-fit Test: Unequal
Expected Frequencies

The U.S. Bureau of the

Census indicated that 63.9%
of the population is married,
7.7% widowed, 6.9%
divorced (and not re-
married), and 21.5% single
(never been married). A
sample of 500 adults from
the Philadelphia area
showed that 310 were
married, 40 widowed, 30
divorced, and 120 single. At
the .02 significance level
can we conclude that the
Philadelphia area is different
from the U.S. as a whole? Example 2
H0: The distribution regarding marital status
in Philadelphia is the same as the rest
of the United States.
H1: The distribution regarding marital status
in Philadelphia is not the same as the
rest of the United States.
 Calculate the expected
frequencies:
Married: (.639)500 = 319.5
Widowed: (.077)500 = 38.5
Divorced: (.069)500 = 34.5
Single: (.215)500 = 107.5
Status f0 fe ( f 0  f e )2 / f e
Married 310 319.5 .2825
Widowed 40 38.5 .0584
Divorced 30 34.5 .5870
Single 120 107.5 1.4535
Total 500 2.3814
 Contingency Table Analysis
Chi-square can be
used to test for a
A contingency
relationship table is used to
between two investigate
nominal scaled whether two traits
variables, where or characteristics
one variable is are related.
independent of the
other.
Continge
ncy Table
 Contingency Table Analysis
Contingency Table Analysis
Each observation is classified according to two
criteria.
We use the usual hypothesis testing procedure.

The degrees of freedom is equal to:

(number of rows-1)(number of columns-1).
The expected frequency is computed as:
Expected Frequency = (row total)(column total)
grand total
 Example
Example:3
Is there a relationship
between the location of an
accident and the gender of
the person involved in the
accident? A sample of 150
accidents reported to the
police were classified by
type and gender. At the .05
level of significance, can we
conclude that gender and
the location of the accident
are related?
 Data:

Observed frequencies (fo )

Gender Work Home Other Total

Male 60 20 10 90

Female 20 30 10 60

Total 80 50 20 150
 Chi-square
• When to use it?
– When you want to know if there is an association between
two categorical (nominal) variables (i.e., between an
exposure and outcome)
• Ex) Smoking (yes/no) and lung cancer (yes/no)
• Ex) Obesity (yes/no) and diabetes (yes/no)

• What does a chi-square test tell you?

– If the observed frequencies of occurrence in each group
are significantly different from expected frequencies (i.e., a
difference of proportions)
 2 : (fo – fe)2/ fe
Gender Work Home Other Total 2
Male (60-48)2 (20-30)2 (10-12)2 6.667
48 30 12

Female (20-32)2 (30-20)2 (12-10)2 10.000

32 20 10

Total 16.667
 Chi-square
• What do the results look like?
– Chi-square test statistics = X2

• How do you interpret it?

– Usually, the higher the chi-square statistic, the
greater likelihood the finding is significant, but
you must look at the corresponding p-value to
determine significance

Tip: Chi square requires that there be 5 or more in each cell of a 2x2 table and 5 or more
in 80% of cells in larger tables. No cells can have a zero count.
 Chi-Square (2) Test

• Chi-Squared (2) Formula

• Not applicable in small samples

– If fewer than 5 observations per cell, use
Fisher’s exact test
THANK YOU…