Question

Sign Test and Wilcoxon Signed-Ranks Test What is a major advantage of the Wilcoxon signed-ranks test over the sign test when analyzing data consisting of matched pairs?

Short answer

The Wilcoxon signed-ranks test uses more information about the data and tends to generate results that better reflect the true nature of the data since the sign test just uses signs of differences. The Wilcoxon signed-ranks test, on the contrary, incorporates ranks of the differences.

This is one major advantage of the Wilcoxon-signed ranks test.

Step-by-step solution

Given information

The Wilcoxon signed-ranks test uses the ranks of the differences between paired values to test if the median of the differences is equal to 0.

Wilcoxon signed-ranks test and sign test

The sign test and the Wilcoxon signed-ranks test are non-parametric tests that are used to check whether the given two samples are from the same population or not based on the median of the samples.

The sign test uses the signs of the differences between the values.

The Wilcoxon signed-ranks test uses the ranks as well as the signs of the differences between the values.

Advantage of Wilcoxon signed-ranks test

The Wilcoxon signed-ranks test is used to test whether the median of the differences of the paired values is equal to 0.

The major advantage of the Wilcoxon signed-ranks test is that it uses the ranks of the differences instead of just their signs.

The results of the Wilcoxon signed-ranks test generate better results that are more comprehensible than the sign test.