A Primer on Nonparametric Analysis, Volume I



Introduction

The term nonparametric statistical analysis refers to methods that do not assume any particular distribution function for the population from which samples are obtained. This does not mean that nonparametric methods do not use parameters. In fact, many of the inferences involve the median, which is a parameter about the central tendencies of the data. Sometimes, nonparametric methods are called distribution-free methods, in the sense that their outcomes do not depend on any particular distribution, such as the normal distribution function. However, more often than not, it indicates that the outcome is valid under different distribution functions or that the inference is valid even ...