In statistics, ranking is the data transformation in which numerical or ordinal values are replaced by their rank when the data are sorted.
For example, if the numerical data 3.4, 5.1, 2.6, 7.3 are observed, the ranks of these data items would be 2, 3, 1 and 4 respectively.
As another example, the ordinal data hot, cold, warm would be replaced by 3, 1, 2. In these examples, the ranks are assigned to values in ascending order, although descending ranks can also be used.
Ranks are related to the indexed list of order statistics, which consists of the original dataset rearranged into ascending order.
Some kinds of statistical tests employ calculations based on ranks. Examples include:
The distribution of values in decreasing order of rank is often of interest when values vary widely in scale; this is the rank-size distribution (or rank-frequency distribution), for example for city sizes or word frequencies. These often follow a power law.
Some ranks can have non-integer values for tied data values. For example, when there is an even number of copies of the same data value, the fractional statistical rank of the tied data ends in ½. Percentile rank is another type of statistical ranking.
Microsoft Excel provides two ranking functions, the Rank.EQ function which assigns competition ranks ("1224") and the Rank.AVG function which assigns fractional ranks ("1 2.5 2.5 4"). The functions have the order argument, [1] which is by default is set to descending, i.e. the largest number will have a rank 1. This is generally uncommon for statistics where the ranking is usually in ascending order, where the smallest number has a rank 1.
A rank correlation can be used to compare two rankings for the same set of objects. For example, Spearman's rank correlation coefficient is useful to measure the statistical dependence between the rankings of athletes in two tournaments. And the Kendall rank correlation coefficient is another approach. Alternatively, intersection/overlap-based approaches offer additional flexibility. One example is the "Rank–rank hypergeometric overlap" approach, [2] which is designed to compare ranking of the genes that are at the "top" of two ordered lists of differentially expressed genes. A similar approach is taken by the "Rank Biased Overlap (RBO)", [3] which also implements an adjustable probability, p, to customize the weight assigned at a desired depth of ranking. These approaches have the advantages of addressing disjoint sets, sets of different sizes, and top-weightedness (taking into account the absolute ranking position, which may be ignored in standard non-weighted rank correlation approaches).
Let be a set of random variables. By sorting them into order, we have defined their order statistics [4]
If all the values are unique, the rank of variable number is the unique solution to the equation . In the presence of ties, we may either use a midrank (corresponding to the "fractional rank" mentioned above), defined as the average of all indices such that , or the uprank (corresponding to the "modified competition ranking") defined by .
Autocorrelation, sometimes known as serial correlation in the discrete time case, is the correlation of a signal with a delayed copy of itself as a function of delay. Informally, it is the similarity between observations of a random variable as a function of the time lag between them. The analysis of autocorrelation is a mathematical tool for finding repeating patterns, such as the presence of a periodic signal obscured by noise, or identifying the missing fundamental frequency in a signal implied by its harmonic frequencies. It is often used in signal processing for analyzing functions or series of values, such as time domain signals.
In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistics it usually refers to the degree to which a pair of variables are linearly related. Familiar examples of dependent phenomena include the correlation between the height of parents and their offspring, and the correlation between the price of a good and the quantity the consumers are willing to purchase, as it is depicted in the so-called demand curve.
In probability theory and statistics, the hypergeometric distribution is a discrete probability distribution that describes the probability of successes in draws, without replacement, from a finite population of size that contains exactly objects with that feature, wherein each draw is either a success or a failure. In contrast, the binomial distribution describes the probability of successes in draws with replacement.
In statistics, the Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC) is a correlation coefficient that measures linear correlation between two sets of data. It is the ratio between the covariance of two variables and the product of their standard deviations; thus, it is essentially a normalized measurement of the covariance, such that the result always has a value between −1 and 1. As with covariance itself, the measure can only reflect a linear correlation of variables, and ignores many other types of relationships or correlations. As a simple example, one would expect the age and height of a sample of children from a primary school to have a Pearson correlation coefficient significantly greater than 0, but less than 1.
In statistics, Spearman's rank correlation coefficient or Spearman's ρ, named after Charles Spearman and often denoted by the Greek letter (rho) or as , is a nonparametric measure of rank correlation. It assesses how well the relationship between two variables can be described using a monotonic function.
Mann–Whitney test is a nonparametric test of the null hypothesis that, for randomly selected values X and Y from two populations, the probability of X being greater than Y is equal to the probability of Y being greater than X.
In statistics, the Page test for multiple comparisons between ordered correlated variables is the counterpart of Spearman's rank correlation coefficient which summarizes the association of continuous variables. It is also known as Page's trend test or Page's L test. It is a repeated measure trend test.
In statistics, the Fisher transformation of a Pearson correlation coefficient is its inverse hyperbolic tangent (artanh). When the sample correlation coefficient r is near 1 or -1, its distribution is highly skewed, which makes it difficult to estimate confidence intervals and apply tests of significance for the population correlation coefficient ρ. The Fisher transformation solves this problem by yielding a variable whose distribution is approximately normally distributed, with a variance that is stable over different values of r.
In statistics, the coefficient of determination, denoted R2 or r2 and pronounced "R squared", is the proportion of the variation in the dependent variable that is predictable from the independent variable(s).
The Wilcoxon signed-rank test is a non-parametric rank test for statistical hypothesis testing used either to test the location of a population based on a sample of data, or to compare the locations of two populations using two matched samples. The one-sample version serves a purpose similar to that of the one-sample Student's t-test. For two matched samples, it is a paired difference test like the paired Student's t-test. The Wilcoxon test is a good alternative to the t-test when the normal distribution of the differences between paired individuals cannot be assumed. Instead, it assumes a weaker hypothesis that the distribution of this difference is symmetric around a central value and it aims to test whether this center value differs significantly from zero. The Wilcoxon test is a more powerful alternative to the sign test because it considers the magnitude of the differences, but it requires this moderately strong assumption of symmetry.
The Friedman test is a non-parametric statistical test developed by Milton Friedman. Similar to the parametric repeated measures ANOVA, it is used to detect differences in treatments across multiple test attempts. The procedure involves ranking each row together, then considering the values of ranks by columns. Applicable to complete block designs, it is thus a special case of the Durbin test.
The point biserial correlation coefficient (rpb) is a correlation coefficient used when one variable is dichotomous; Y can either be "naturally" dichotomous, like whether a coin lands heads or tails, or an artificially dichotomized variable. In most situations it is not advisable to dichotomize variables artificially. When a new variable is artificially dichotomized the new dichotomous variable may be conceptualized as having an underlying continuity. If this is the case, a biserial correlation would be the more appropriate calculation.
In statistics, a rank correlation is any of several statistics that measure an ordinal association—the relationship between rankings of different ordinal variables or different rankings of the same variable, where a "ranking" is the assignment of the ordering labels "first", "second", "third", etc. to different observations of a particular variable. A rank correlation coefficient measures the degree of similarity between two rankings, and can be used to assess the significance of the relation between them. For example, two common nonparametric methods of significance that use rank correlation are the Mann–Whitney U test and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test.
Kendall's W is a non-parametric statistic for rank correlation. It is a normalization of the statistic of the Friedman test, and can be used for assessing agreement among raters and in particular inter-rater reliability. Kendall's W ranges from 0 to 1.
In statistics, the Kendall rank correlation coefficient, commonly referred to as Kendall's τ coefficient, is a statistic used to measure the ordinal association between two measured quantities. A τ test is a non-parametric hypothesis test for statistical dependence based on the τ coefficient. It is a measure of rank correlation: the similarity of the orderings of the data when ranked by each of the quantities. It is named after Maurice Kendall, who developed it in 1938, though Gustav Fechner had proposed a similar measure in the context of time series in 1897.
In statistics, inter-rater reliability is the degree of agreement among independent observers who rate, code, or assess the same phenomenon.
In probability theory and statistics, partial correlation measures the degree of association between two random variables, with the effect of a set of controlling random variables removed. When determining the numerical relationship between two variables of interest, using their correlation coefficient will give misleading results if there is another confounding variable that is numerically related to both variables of interest. This misleading information can be avoided by controlling for the confounding variable, which is done by computing the partial correlation coefficient. This is precisely the motivation for including other right-side variables in a multiple regression; but while multiple regression gives unbiased results for the effect size, it does not give a numerical value of a measure of the strength of the relationship between the two variables of interest.
In statistics, the Siegel–Tukey test, named after Sidney Siegel and John Tukey, is a non-parametric test which may be applied to data measured at least on an ordinal scale. It tests for differences in scale between two groups.
Financial correlations measure the relationship between the changes of two or more financial variables over time. For example, the prices of equity stocks and fixed interest bonds often move in opposite directions: when investors sell stocks, they often use the proceeds to buy bonds and vice versa. In this case, stock and bond prices are negatively correlated.
Ordinal data is a categorical, statistical data type where the variables have natural, ordered categories and the distances between the categories are not known. These data exist on an ordinal scale, one of four levels of measurement described by S. S. Stevens in 1946. The ordinal scale is distinguished from the nominal scale by having a ranking. It also differs from the interval scale and ratio scale by not having category widths that represent equal increments of the underlying attribute.
