The Benard-Van Elteren statistic and nonparametric computation

Abstract

A general computer program which generates either the Wilcoxon, Kruskal-Wallis, Friedman, or extended Friedman statistic (where the numbers of cell observations n_ij may be any positive integer or zero) can be formulated simply by using the computational algorithm for the Benard-Van Elteren statistic. It is shown that the Benard-Van Elteren statistic can be computed using matrix algebra subroutines including multiplication and inverse or g-inverse computational algorithms in the case where the rank of the matrix V of the variances and covariances of the column totals is k-1. For the case where the rank of V is less than k-1 the use of the g-inverse is shown to greatly reduce the labors of calculation. In addition, the use of the Benard-Van Elteren statistic in testing against ordered alternatives is indicated.

Keywords:

• generalized
• Friedman statistic
• g-inverse
• computational advantage