REVISITING THE T-TEST ON RANKS AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE WILCOXON RANK-SUM TEST

In comparison with the Student t test, the test on the ranks of scores has been shown to be slightly less powerful than the Wilcoxon Rank-Su m test conducted on the original scores for real smooth and symmetric data sets because it does nor provide a correction for ties or continu ity. Here it is demonstrated that the t test on ranks is nonetheless s uperior to the usual t test for real data that are skewed or otherwise severely nonnormally distributed.