The Distribution of the Maximum Sum of Ranks.

In this paper a c-sample slippage analogue of the Wilcoxon [11] test is considered. Given a sample of size n for each of c populations, the test rejects the hypothesis that the c populations are identical when max[sub 1≤i≤c ∑[sub h] τ[sub ik] > λ, where τ[sub i1], …, τ[sub in] are the ranks of the observations from the i-th population in the combined sample of size cn. The small and large sample distributions of the test statistic are derived. Tables of the exact distribution are given for c = 2(1)5, n = 2(1)5. Tables of critical values are given for c = 2(1)6, n = 2(1)8 for values of α = 0.001, 0.005, 0.01, 0.025, 0.05, 0.10, and 0.20. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]