nonparametric statistics

Bootstrapping—resampling data with replacement and recomputing quantities of interest—lets analysts approximate sampling distributions for complex estimators and frees them of the reliably unmet assumptions of traditional, parametric inferential statistics. It’s an elegant, intuitive approach in which an analyst exploits the (often) parallel resample-to-sample and sample-to-population relationships to understand uncertainty in an estimate.

Least squares is so frequently the method by which linear regressions are estimated that in many write-ups of analyses, explicit mention of the method is omitted. Authors save the ink or pixels otherwise consumed by “least squares” and let it simply be inferred. This is an understandable elision: You could make good money repeatedly betting that when someone says that they fit a linear regression, they did so via least squares. But alternative estimation methods are on offer—and are sometimes preferable.

From 2004 to 2008, a series of four brief, disagreeing papers in the journal Medical Education took up the question of whether and when it’s appropriate to analyze data from Likert scales (i.e., integers reflecting degrees of agreement with statements) with parametric or nonparametric statistical methods.

One of the most well-known statistical tests to analyze the differences between means of given groups is the ANOVA (analysis of variance) test. While ANOVA is a great tool, it assumes that the data in question follows a normal distribution. What if your data doesn’t follow a normal distribution or if your sample size is too small to determine a normal distribution? That’s where the Kruskal-Wallis test comes in.

The Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test is often described as the non-parametric version of the two-sample t-test. You sometimes see it in analysis flowcharts after a question such as "is your data normal?" A "no" branch off this question will recommend a Wilcoxon test if you're comparing two groups of continuous measures.

So what is this Wilcoxon test? What makes it non-parametric? What does that even mean? And how do we implement it and interpret it? Those are some of the questions we aim to address in this post.