Thanks Peter,
There are 8 measurements less than 8.5, so calculating the probability
(binomial)  of 8, or fewer, happening by chance with n = 20 and p = 0.50
gives P = 0.25-- the book answer.  I've tried several problems in other
textbooks and in each case I get vastly different P-values than I get with
wilcox.test or wilcox.exact.
However, upon further testing, I've found good agreement when the calculated
P-values are small, but disagreement when P-values are large.  This might
mean a problem with wilcox.test and wilcox.exact when P-values are large or
I might be misinterpreting something.
CHV
 ﻿ ﻿ 
Charles H Van deZande
-------Original Message-------
 
From: Peter Dalgaard
Date: 5/19/2009 5:35:07 AM
To: cvandy
Cc: r-help@r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] Wilcoxon nonparametric p-values
 
cvandy wrote:
> When I use wilcox.test, I get vastly different p-values than the problems
> from Statistics textbooks.
> For example:
> The following problem comes from "Applied Statistics and Probability for
> Engineers", 2nd Edition, by D. C. Montgomery.  Page736, problem 14.7.  The
> problem is to compare the sample data with a population median of 8.5. 
The
> book answer is p = 0.25, wilcox.test answer is p = 0.573.
> I've tried several other similar problems with similar results.  I've
copied
> the following directly from my workspace.
 
wilcox.exact (from exactRankTests) gives
 
  > wilcox.exact(x - 8.5)
 
  Exact Wilcoxon signed rank test
 
data:  x - 8.5
V = 80.5, p-value = 0.5748
 
so I'd suspect the textbook. One-sided p-value perhaps? or table
limitation (as in "p > .25"). If you want to dig deeper, you'll probably
have to check the computations implied by the text.
 
> Thanks for any help,
> CHV
>> x<-c(8.32,8.05,
>> 8.93,8.65,8.25,8.46,8.52,8.35,8.36,8.41,8.42,8.30,8.71,8.75,8.6,8.83,8.5
8.38,8.29,8.46)
>> wilcox.test(x,y=NULL,mu=8.5)
>         Wilcoxon signed rank test with continuity correction
>  data:  x
> V = 80.5, p-value = 0.573
> alternative hypothesis: true location is not equal to 8.5
>
> Warning messages:
> 1: In wilcox.test.default(x, y = NULL, mu = 8.5) :
>   cannot compute exact p-value with ties
> 2: In wilcox.test.default(x, y = NULL, mu = 8.5) :
>   cannot compute exact p-value with zeroes
> ﻿ ﻿
> Charles H Van deZande
>
>
>
>
>
>  ﻿
 
 
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   c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
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