An analysis of variance test for normality (complete samples)

Abstract

The main intent of this paper is to introduce a new statistical procedure for testing a complete sample for normality. The test statistic is obtained by dividing the square of an appropriate linear combination of the sample order statistics by the usual symmetric estimate of variance. This ratio is both scale and origin invariant and hence the statistic is appropriate for a test of the composite hypothesis of normality. Testing for distributional assumptions in general and for normality in particular has been a major area of continuing statistical research-both theoretically and practically. A possible cause of such sustained interest is that many statistical procedures have been derived based on particular distributional assumptions-especially that of normality. Although in many cases the techniques are more robust than the assumptions underlying them, still a knowledge that the underlying assumption is incorrect may temper the use and application of the methods. Moreover, the study of a body of data with the stimulus of a distributional test may encourage consideration of, for example, normalizing transformations and the use of alternate methods such as distribution-free techniques, as well as detection of gross peculiarities such as outliers or errors. The test procedure developed in this paper is defined and some of its analytical properties described in ? 2. Operational information and tables useful in employing the test are detailed in ? 3 (which may be read independently of the rest of the paper). Some examples are given in ? 4. Section 5 consists of an extract from an empirical sampling study of the comparison of the effectiveness of various alternative tests. Discussion and concluding remarks are given in ?6. 2. THE W TEST FOR NORMALITY (COMPLETE SAMPLES) 2 1. Motivation and early work This study was initiated, in part, in an attempt to summarize formally certain indications of probability plots. In particular, could one condense departures from statistical linearity of probability plots into one or a few 'degrees of freedom' in the manner of the application of analysis of variance in regression analysis? In a probability plot, one can consider the regression of the ordered observations on the expected values of the order statistics from a standardized version of the hypothesized distribution-the plot tending to be linear if the hypothesis is true. Hence a possible method of testing the distributional assumptionis by means of an analysis of variance type procedure. Using generalized least squares (the ordered variates are correlated) linear and higher-order