UNICORN - A PROGRAM FOR TRANSFORMING DATA TO APPROXIMATE NORMALITY

Unicorn, a BASIC computer program that automates the Box-Cox transform ation, is described. Unicorn reads free field ASCII data files, is com pletely interactive, and is user friendly. Unicorn can handle flies wi th or without missing data. Descriptive statistics and tests of normal ity are provided for each variable in untransformed format. Statistics include the first four moments of the distribution, the third and fou rth L-moments, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, and D'Agostino et al.'s te sts of normality. The user is then offered a choice of minimizing skew ness or departures from normality overall. The optimal transformation is then found and descriptive statistics and tests of normality are pr ovided for the transformed data. A new ASCII data file is written with transformed data. This new data file is then available for further an alysis.