Re: st: non parametric tests

[Richard Williams <Richard.A.Williams.5@ND.edu>]

At 06:11 PM 8/10/2005 +0100, Ron�n Conroy wrote:
> The old SPSS manual (Nie, Hull et al) maintaned that Kendall's tau-b was 
> superior to Spearman's rho when there were many ties or a small number of 
> individual values in one of the variables. I am not sure of the evidence 
> for this - does anyone know?
I still have that book! (1975 edition)  It is actually better than a lot of 
their later documentation in that it tries to explain the statistics a bit, 
shows more formulas and explains what SPSS is doing, as opposed to just 
showing you syntax.

The argument you refer to is made on p. 289 without citation.  Further, 
they use such definitive language as "seems to be...somewhat more 
meaningful..."  Perhaps they just based the claim based on their own 
personal observations?


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Richard Williams, Notre Dame Dept of Sociology
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