This article was downloaded by: [Michigan State University]

On: 18 January 2015, At: 11:32

Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,
37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

The American Statistician

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/utas20

Nonparametrics: The Early YearsImpressions and

Recollections
a
Gottfried E. Noether
a
Department of Statistics , University of Connecticut , Storrs , CT , 06268 , USA
Published online: 30 Mar 2012.

To cite this article: Gottfried E. Noether (1984) Nonparametrics: The Early YearsImpressions and Recollections, The American
Statistician, 38:3, 173-178, DOI: 10.1080/00031305.1984.10483194

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00031305.1984.10483194

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content) contained in the
publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations
or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any
opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the
views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be
independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses,
actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever
caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic
reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any
form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://
www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
 Nonparametrics: The Early Years-
Impressions and Recollections
GOTIFRIED E. NOETHER *
In 1942 Wolfowitz introduced the term nonparametric
into the statistical literature to call attention to the need
for extending then-existing statistical theory beyond the
customary parametric framework. Subsequently, statis-
tical methods that did not depend on a strictly para-
metric setup became known as nonparametric methods.
This article surveys developments in nonparametrics
roughly up to 1960. The suggestion is made that statis-
tics might be better served by eliminating the term non-
parametric altogether from the statistical vocabulary.
Nonparametrics is nearly as old as statistics itself. The
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 11:32 18 January 2015
Bibliography of Nonparametric Statistics (Savage 1962)
contains an entry dated 1710. In that year John
Arbuthnot-scholar, scientist, mathematician, literary
figure, and physician to Queen Anne-had a paper
published entitled "An Argument for Divine Provi-
dence, Taken from the Constant Regularity Observed
in the Births of Both Sexes." In the paper, Arbuthnot
performed what surely must have been the first sign test
and likely the first test ever of a statistical hypothesis.
From records of christenings of infants in the city of
London, Arbuthnot had noted that for each of the 82
years from 1629 to 1710, the number of male births
exceeded the number of female births. On the basis of
these observations, he rejected what he called the "hy-
pothesis of chance," which assigned probability 1/2 to
an excess of male over female births in anyone year.
Rather, Arbuthnot concluded, divine providence had
ordained an excess of male births over female births to
offset a higher male death rate and thus ensure equal
proportions of adult males and females. The idea of "an
omnipresent activating deity who maintains mean sta-
tistical values" formed the foundation of much of the
statistics of the 18th century (Eisenhart and Birnbaum
1967).
We shall see that there are additional isolated in-
stances of the use of non parametric methods during the
closing years of the 19th century and the early years of
the 20th century. But many present-day writers on non-
parametrics consider the Hotelling and Pabst (1936)
paper on rank correlation to be the real start of the
discipline now generally known as nonparametric statis-
tics. There are even some statisticians who would post-
pone the start of nonparametrics until 1945, the year
Gottfried E. Noether is Professor, Department of Statistics, Uni-
versity of Connecticut, Storrs, cr 06268. This article is based on the
Pfizer Colloquium Lecture at the University of Connecticut,
presented by the author on April 28, 1983. The Pfizer Colloquium
series is under the sponsorship of Pfizer Central Research.
The American Statistician, August 1984, Vol. 38, No.3
Wilcoxon published his first paper dealing with what are
now called the Wilcoxon one- and two-sample tests.
The actual word nonparametric appeared for the first
time in Wolfowitz (1942). In that paper, which is a
report of his Ph.D. research, Wolfowitz looked at devel-
opments in mathematical statistics and observed:
Most of these developments have this feature in common, that the
distribution functions of the various stochastic variables which en-
ter into their problems are assumed to be of known functional
form, and the theories of estimation and of testing hypotheses are
theories of estimation of and of testing hypotheses about, one or
more parameters, finite in number, the knowledge of which would
completely determine the various distribution functions involved.
We shall refer to this situation for brevity as the parametric case,
and denote the opposite situation, where the functional forms of
the distributions are unknown, as the non-parametric case. (p. 264)
Wolfowitz then went on to explain:
The literature of theoretical statistics deals principally with the
parametric case. The reasons for this are perhaps partly historic
and partly the fact that interesting results could more readily be
expected to follow from the assumption of normality. Another
reason is that, while the parametric case was for long developed on
an intuitive basis, progress in the nonparametric case requires the
use of modern notions. However, the needs of theoretical com-
pleteness and of practical research require the development of the
theory of the non-parametric case. (p. 265)
It seems clear from this quotation that Wolfowitz's
main reason for adding the term nonparametric to the
statistical vocabulary was to call attention to the need
for research in a new field. Indeed, the second part of
Wolfowitz's paper constituted an attempt to apply the
likelihood ratio principle, which Neyman and Pearson
had proposed 10 years earlier for the solution of para-
metric problems, to the nonparametric case. In retro-
spect the attempt was not very successful. Seven years
later, while reviewing nonparametric inference at the
first Berkeley Symposium, Wolfowitz (1949) observed
that a small beginning had been made but that as yet no
general theory of nonparametric tests existed.
General acceptance of the term nonparametric was
rather slow. During the 1940's only a few mathematical
statisticians at Columbia and Princeton Universities
used it in papers published almost exclusively in the
Annals of Mathematical Statistics. The first use of the
term in the Journal of the American Statistical Associ-
ation seems to be in Noether (1949a).
Soon after Wolfowitz called attention to nonpara-
metrics, Scheffe (1943) responded with a paper that not
only proposed a theoretical framework for the develop-
ment of non parametric theory but also provided a fairly
complete list of then-existing procedures that could be
called nonparametric.
This is how Scheffe viewed nonparametric hypothesis
testing and estimation in 1943. He discussed hypothesis
173
 testing under five headings: goodness of fit, random-
ness, the problem of two samples, independence, and
the analysis of variance. Under goodness of fit there
were Pearson's chi-squared criterion of 1900 and the
Kolmogorov statistic of the early 1930's. The principal
tools for testing randomness in a series of observations
were runs of various kinds. Among the two-sample tests
mentioned by Scheffe-s-in addition to Pearson's chi-
squared-were Pitman's randomization test based on
the statistic y - x, the Wald-Wolfowitz run test, and the
Smirnov test. For testing independence of two vari-
ables, statisticians could choose between the Spearman
rank correlation test and Pitman's randomization test
based on the Pearson correlation coefficient. Kendall's
tau was mentioned but dismissed with the remark that
it did not seem to offer any practical advantages over
Spearman rho. Under the analysis of variance label,
Scheffe mentioned only the analysis of randomized
blocks. In addition to Fisher's sign test for the com-
parison of two treatments, Scheffe noted Pitman's
randomization test and Friedman's rank analysis test.
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 11:32 18 January 2015
Scheffe's discussion of nonparametric estimation was
considerably shorter than the discussion of hypothesis
testing. Before getting down to details, Scheffe found it
necessary to define estimation in the nonparametric
case. I may be reading too much into Scheffe's words,
but I sense some uneasiness on his part in using the term
nonparametric in connection with estimation. This is
how he led up to estimation:
Let e be a real number determined by a distribution F (a functional
of F). Thus e might be the mean of the distribution, in which case
e would be defined for all distributions possessing a first moment.
We shall not call e a parameter in order to avoid confusion with the
parametric case. (p. 320)
Scheffe clearly recognized a potential problem with the
term nonparametric. I shall say more about this prob-
lem later on.
By 1943 the subject of point estimation had received
practically no attention from the non parametric view-
point. Scheffe simply mentioned that the ideas of un-
biasedness and consistency of point estimates carried
over from the parametric to the nonparametric case
without change. He added that under very general con-
ditions, the sample median was a consistent estimate of
the population median.
Confidence intervals had fared only slightly better
than point estimation. Scheffe mentioned only three
problems: confidence intervals for the median of a pop-
ulation, confidence intervals for the difference of two
medians, and confidence limits for an unknown distri-
bution function.
The confidence interval for a population median
bounded by two order statistics was proposed by
Thompson (1936). For the difference of two medians,
Scheffe proposed an interval based on separate con-
fidence intervals for the two medians; but he added that
the procedure was not very efficient. Alternatively, in
the case of a shift model, Pitman's randomization test
for the two-sample problem furnished a confidence in-
terval for the median difference. Ten years later Lincoln
174 The American Statistician, August 1984, Vol. 38, No.3
Moses proposed the intuitively simplest of all possible
intervals, one that was bounded by two appropriately
chosen sample differences, Y - x.
The problem of confidence limits for a cumulative
distribution function was formulated and solved by
Wald and Wolfowitz (1939). It is not generally realized
that Wald and Wolfowitz considered much more gen-
eral confidence regions than the confidence band that
results from inverting the Kolmogorov goodness of fit
criterion. But the need to invert an (n + 1)-dimensional
matrix to calculate confidence coefficients hindered the
practical exploitation of these general results. When
Wald and Wolfowitz wrote their paper in 1939, they
were not aware of the 1933 paper by Kolmogorov that
gave the asymptotic distribution of the Kolmogorov sta-
tistic. On the other hand, there is no evidence that
Kolmogorov had recognized the possibility of inverting
his goodness of fit statement to produce a confidence
band prior to the Wald and Wolfowitz paper.
The problem of nonparametric estimation that re-
ceived the most attention during the early 1940's was
the problem of distribution-free tolerance intervals.
The underlying problem had been posed by Shewhart,
an engineer at the Bell Telephone Laboratories. For the
one-dimensional case, the problem was solved by Wilks
(1942) with the help of order statistics. An utterly sim-
ple but ingenious idea by Wald (1943) made it possible
to use the Wilks approach with multivariate data as
well. It is interesting to note that most present-day
writers on nonparametrics do not even mention toler-
ance intervals.
The bibliography attached to Scheffe's survey paper
included 58 titles. We can gain an idea of the rapid
growth of nonparametrics during subsequent years by
looking at the bibliography of Savage (1953, 1962). The
first edition of this bibliography, published 10 years
after the Scheffe survey, had 999 entries; a second edi-
tion, published nine years after the first edition, con-
tained about 3,000 titles. No further editions of this
useful bibliography were published, and I am unaware
of any other comprehensive literature counts.
My personal initiation into nonparametrics occurred
in the fall of 1946, when Wolfowitz offered at Columbia
University what must have been one of the first courses
(if not the first ever) in nonparametric statistics. Two
years later I had the additional good fortune to be able
to attend the guest lectures that Pitman gave at Col-
umbia University. My lifelong interest in nonparamet-
rics dates from these Wolfowitz and Pitman lectures.
Let me look at these two sets of lectures in some
detail. On the whole, Wolfowitz covered the material
mentioned in the Scheffe survey, supplementing it with
new results that he and Wald had obtained in the mean-
time. One particular such result stands out in my mind:
Condition W for the asymptotic normality of linear
forms under randomization (Wald and Wolfowitz
1944). Asymptotic normality of relevant test statistics
under the null hypothesis had been taken for granted all
along. But earlier arguments had usually relied merely
on the study of the first four moments of the test statis-
 tic. Now, by checking that the coefficients of the linear
form and the observations over which randomization
occurred satisfied a simple condition, it became possi-
ble to establish rigorously that the distribution of the
test statistic tended to normality with increasing sample
size. The Spearman rank correlation coefficient offered
a striking example of the power of the theorem. Hotel-
ling and Pabst (1936) had provided a lengthy proof of
the asymptotic normality of Spearman rho, but with the
Wald-Wolfowitz theorem it was only necessary to show
that the integers from 1 to N satisfied Condition W, an
almost obvious fact.
Several years later I had another demonstration of
the power of the Wald-Wolfowitz theorem. The emi-
nent Dutch algebraist van der Waerden had proposed a
two-sample test that used percentiles of the normal dis-
tribution as weights. He did not succeed, however, in
providing a generally valid proof of the asymptotic nor-
mality of his test statistic. As I pointed out to him, it was
only necessary to show that the percentiles of the nor-
mal distribution satisfied Condition W, a result that
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 11:32 18 January 2015
followed immediately from the fact that the normal dis-
tribution had finite moments of all orders.
In Noether (1949b) I further weakened Condition W.
This weaker condition, after further simplification, now
plays an important role in the theory of linear rank
statistics (Hajek 1961).
Whereas Wolfowitz provided a broad survey of what
was known in 1946 about nonparametrics, Pitman's lec-
tures in 1948 focused on how to compare nonparametric
methods with corresponding normal theory methods
and with each other. Most statisticians of that time took
it for granted that non parametric methods were what
they liked to call wasteful of information. As we shall
see later, even Wilcoxon, who in 1945 proposed what
has become the most widely used non parametric pro-
cedure in existence, was convinced that his method did
not use all the information available. But he was willing
to make a sacrifice for the sake of simplicity.
Wolfowitz's response to criticism implying the waste-
fulness of nonparametric methods was straightforward
and to the point: The only kind of information a non-
parametric procedure is likely to waste is information
that is unavailable anyway. In his Columbia University
lectures, Pitman went a step further by proposing a
quantitative measure for the comparison of two com-
peting tests of the same hypothesis based on the com-
parison of respective sample sizes that produce equal
power for equal alternatives. This quantity is now
known as Pitman relative efficiency.
For the comparison of the sign test with the t test, the
Pitman relative efficiency turned out to be a disap-
pointingly low 2hr (or .64) if observations came from a
normal population. A statistician who under such cir-
cumstances uses the sign test in place of the t test indeed
wastes one observation out of every three. But this is
not the complete picture, as Pitman pointed out as early
as 1948. Since statisticians use the t test not only when
sampling normal populations, supplementary informa-
tion is needed. For populations with sufficiently long
The American Statistician, August 1984, Vol. 38, No.3
tails, the sign test may well require fewer observations
than the t test to achieve a prescribed power. For exam-
ple, for double exponential distributions the Pitman
efficiency of the sign test relative to the t test is 2, and
a statistician who uses the t test rather than the sign test
actually wastes one out of every two observations.
For the one- and two-sample Wilcoxon tests, com-
pared with the corresponding t tests, the Pitman effi-
ciency turned out to be an amazingly high 3hr (or .955)
in the case of normal populations. Even more sur-
prisingly, whatever the underlying distribution, the effi-
ciency of the Wilcoxon tests relative to the t tests is
never less than .864 and is actually greater than 1 for
populations with only slightly longer tails than those for
normal distributions. Far from wasting information, in
many practical sampling situations the Wilcoxon tests
make better use of the available information than the
corresponding t tests, provide exact tests when the null
hypothesis is true, and are considerably less sensitive to
outliers among the observations than the t procedures.
Pitman's concept of relative efficiency was just the
tool I had needed in my thesis work on the effect of
transformations of the observations in the Wald-
Wolfowitz test of randomness. Due to circumstances,
Pitman never published his work on relative efficiency
beyond its inclusion in a restricted and highly prized set
of lecture notes (Pitman 1948). As a result, Noether
(1950), which resulted from my thesis, remained for
several years the only generally available reference to
Pitman efficiency.
Noether (1955) extended Pitman's results and called
attention to the close connection between Pitman test
efficiency and classical estimation efficiency. As early
as 1936, Hotelling and Pabst, in dealing with the Spear-
man rank correlation coefficient, had used estimating
efficiency as a measure of testing efficiency; and one
year later Cochran (1937) used the same approach for
comparing the sign test with the t test. But none of these
statisticians ever elaborated on what they meant by test-
ing efficiency, nor did they go beyond normal popula-
tions for their comparisons. It was Pitman's approach
that permitted the first realistic evaluation of non-
parametric tests of hypotheses. Fifteen years later, Leh-
mann (1963) completed the picture by showing that
Pitman efficiency also provided the information re-
quired for the comparison of competing confidence in-
terval procedures.
Thus starting in the late 1930's, a relatively small
group of theoretical statisticians were seriously inter-
ested in establishing firm foundations for a new branch
of statistics, which became known as nonparametric sta-
tistics. Unrelated to these efforts, and in some cases
preceding them by many years, applied scientists in var-
ious fields of research attempted to get away from the
restraints of the normal distribution. Some of these re-
searchers were motivated by the conscious realization
that methods based on the normality assumption might
lead to misleading conclusions or might otherwise be
inappropriate, and others, simply by a desire to reduce
computational drudgery. Galton's preference for the
175
 median in the 1880's and Spearrna , . .
the rank correlation coefficient in in s introduction of
amples of such inclinations. 1904 were early ex-
To a great many statisticians, the . the Behrens-Fisher problem. Elsewhere (Noether
parametric procedure is the two-sar most t~plcally non-
Many years ago Cuthbert Daniel tolnple WIlcoxon test.
had simply been fed up with the dru d me that Wilco~on
one t statistic after another and wa dgery of computing
thing simpler. When he proposed Ws lo?king for some-
the Wilcoxon two-sample test, he dihat IS no.w k~own as
of greater generality but, rather, ~d not think m terms
computational ease. He was even Vl~ ~erms of greater
alty for this greater simplicity, as (l1hng to pay a pen-
the following statement (Wilcoxon oecomes clear from
1949):
It is not always realized that there are ava
methods which are quite useful in interpreilable rapid approximate
ments, even though these approximate metmg the results of experi-
the information contained in the data. (fthods do not utilize fully
J. 3)
To the best of my knowledge, Vv,. . .
not adopt the term nonparametric ilcoxon himself did
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 11:32 18 January 2015
tially considered to be rapid approxi for what. h~ essen-
cedures until many years later. But .mate statistical pro-
term nonparametric became synon/or man.y others the
rough-and-ready, and quick-and-d~ous WIth shortcu~,
true that when Tukey and Wallis sllrty methods. It IS
ready and quick-and-dirty methods poke o~ roug?-and-
to express a derogatory judgment.' they.dId not mten?
this way: Walhs (1952) put It
Quick-and-dirty, or rough-and-ready, tes ..
test. It is certainly quick and ready, and itts are typified by the sign
for publication people usually prefer SOl is rough and dirty in that
though I am sure that this is often supernething more elaborate,
fluous. (p. 35)
In the minds of many practicing sts . . .
the rough-and-ready and qUick_anltls~IClanS, however,
to reflect reality, and throughout tlj-dlrty ~abels bega,n
nonparametric methods were prirr1e ~950 sand 1960 s
ersatz and make-do. It is unfortunalanly thought of as
book-length treatments of nonpar t e tha~ the principal
that period-Siegel (1956) and theametnc methods of
volume Walsh (1968)-were ineft m~nUI~ent~1 thr~e
this general impression. Only durilectlve in dispelling
years has there been some evidence 1g the past 10 or 15
in this attitude, though even now tl: of a gradual chan?e
ticians who seem to think that non lere are many statts-
are inferior and do not deserve to parametric methods
normal theory methods. oe put on a par with
One of the most attractive feature
is the conceptual simplicity of~s of nonparametri~s
methods, so it is not surprising th~many of the bas~c
ideas occurred to researchers long it some of the baSIC
known under their present nam before they became
pointed out that the scoring schemes. Kr~skal (1957)
dall rank correlation coefficient il on WhICh the Ken-
early as 1897 by the German psychi ba~ed was used as
other German psychologist and peJloglst Fechner. An-
proposed the Mann-Whitney versjdagogue, De,uchler,
two-sample test in 1914. And som on. of the Wl1~oxon
ered to my great surprise that the e time ago I dISCOV-
, 'G . steps between the two sample medians. This statistic is
Behrens was an early supporter 0 erman agronoml~t
f the nonparametnc
176 The American Statistici
an, August 1984, Vol. 38, No.3
approach. It is ironic that in the statistical literature
Behrens's name should be inseparably associated with
1979), I pointed out that Behrens himself did not seem
to put much faith in the solution that he proposed in
1929 for what is now called the Behrens-Fisher problem
and that became the basis of the celebrated Neyman-
Fisher controversy.
Behrens certainly did not have similar doubts about
the desirability of developing what are now called non-
parametric methods. He must have been one of the first
scientists to realize clearly the limitations of standard
normal theory procedures. This is what he had to say in
1933:
The arithmetic mean and the standard deviation have gained the
widest acceptance for characterizing a set of observations. The
leading position of these two statistical measures is presumably
connected with the fact that many observation systems follow near-
ly normal distributions. If the normal error function is appropriate,
the arithmetic mean is the most advantageous measure of central-
ity and the standard deviation is the most advantageous measure of
accuracy. But there are situations in which the distribution law has
no similarity to the Gaussian law of error, and it is therefore
important to have methods of data analysis which make no specific
assumption about the distribution law. Then the only usable mea-
sure of centrality is the median. (p. 77)
Turning to the two-sample problem, Behrens con-
tinued:
In order to ascertain whether two sets of observations come from
the same population, for normal error laws, we find the difference
of arithmetic means and the standard deviation of the difference.
But if we are dealing with populations of unknown distribution
laws, we cannot use statistical measures that depend on the actual
size of the objects, but should use measures that essentially depend
on the relative position of the objects. (p. 80)
Rarely do we find statements as unequivocal as these,
even in present-day nonparametric literature.
What, then, did Behrens propose to put in place of
the customary t tests? For the one-sample problem, he
proposed a statistic A equal to the number of steps
between the sample median and the hypothetical popu-
lation median, where a step was defined as the passage
from one observation to a neighboring observation.
Thus the statistic A was simply a linear function of the
sign test statistic. Behrens was primarily interested in
hypothesis testing, so his remark that "the measure A
indicates bounds within which the true population me-
dian presumably lies" (p. 80) almost escapes notice.
There is not much doubt that Behrens proposed a con-
fidence interval for the population median whose end-
points are two symmetrically positioned order statistics,
to use present-day terminology. To appreciate this re-
sult fully, one must remember that Neyman's first paper
on confidence intervals did not appear until 1934 and
that the generally accepted reference to confidence in-
tervals for a population median is Thompson (1936).
Behrens also proposed a solution for the two-sample
problem. Generalizing his one-sample statistic, he de-
fined a two-sample statistic based on the number of
a simple linear function of the number of observations
 in one of the samples that exceed the common median
(Noether 1974). Behrens thus anticipated by some 15
years the median test.
Let me conclude these reflections on nonparametrics
with some final comments. I suggested earlier that in
1943 Scheffe already seemed to feel uneasy about the
then newly introduced term nonparametric. Five years
later Pitman, in his Columbia University lectures, was
considerably more outspoken about his misgivings con-
cerning the term. In his introductory lecture, he spoke
about inference problems encountered in practice:
Often we have no knowledge of the nature of the population
distribution except what is supplied by the sample .... Valid tests
have been devised to deal with such cases .... Because in develop-
ing them and applying them we usually do not start from an as-
sumption that the chance variable has a distribution function of
known form but involving certain unknown parameters, they have
been called nonparametric tests; but the name is not a good one
and it is to be hoped that someone will soon think of a much better
name .... We can use these tests to estimate parameters and so test
hypotheses concerning parameters. (Pitman 1948, p. 1)
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 11:32 18 January 2015
We now know that Pitman's hope has remained un-
fulfilled. In 1967, I raised the issue of more appropriate
terminology in a letter to the editor of The American
Statistician (Noether 1967). There was some reader sup-
port for the idea of change, but no really viable alterna-
tives were proposed. Several readers suggested the term
distribution-free. In my opinion, however, distribution-
free does not fill the bill. Nonparametric confidence
intervals are distribution-free provided underlying pop-
ulations are continuous. Nonparametric tests are
distribution-free, but only under the null hypothesis
and, again, if the underlying populations are continu-
ous. But nonparametric point estimates are not
distribution-free. The term distribution-free has its le-
gitimate place in the statistical vocabulary, but it is not
sufficiently broad to cover what is now loosely called
nonparametrics. Since it is not very likely that one of
these days, somebody will propose more suitable termi-
nology, I should like to propose a different solution. Is
it really necessary to have a separate name for what we
now generally call nonparametrics? The term non-
parametric may have some historical significance and
meaning for theoretical statisticians, but it only serves
to confuse applied statisticians.
Following the general mistrust of anything non-
parametric during the 1950's and 1960's, there are now
indications that a growing number of statisticians are
willing to accept nonparametric procedures as legiti-
mate alternatives to the classical normal-theory meth-
ods. Almost every recent introductory statistics text
contains a chapter on nonparametric methods. Un-
fortunately the treatment is frequently one-sided and
superficial. The main emphasis is on a few well-known
nonparametric tests of hypotheses, thus strengthening
the widely held misconception that nonparametrics is
primarily concerned with hypothesis testing. The fact
that location, scale, and regression parameters can be
estimated non parametrically by both point estimates
and confidence intervals is hardly ever mentioned. In
addition, the chapter on nonparametrics is often placed
The American Statistician, August 1984, Vol. 38, No.3
at the end of a book, and there is almost no attempt to
integrate the material on nonparametrics with the cor-
responding normal-theory material. Dropping the non-
parametric altogether from the statistical vocabulary
would facilitate treating statistical methods as a unit
instead of erecting an artificial barrier between classical
methods and something called nonparametric methods,
whatever they might be.
My interest in nonparametrics dates from my
graduate-student days at Columbia University. Over
the years, however, the direction of my interest has
gradually changed from the theoretical to the ped-
agogical. I am convinced that nonparametric methods
are a more appropriate basis on which to develop an
introductory statistics course than the classical normal-
theory methods. Both conceptually and theoretically,
the nonparametric approach is fat simpler than the clas-
sical approach (Noether 1982). In this day and age,
when numeracy is as important as literacy and more and
more people are faced with the necessity of coping with
quantitative information, it is important to develop sta-
tistics courses in which the mathematical aspects do not
overwhelm the statistical content of the course.
The fact that over the years scientists like Arbuthnot,
Fechner, Deuchler, Spearman, Behrens, Wilcoxon, and
others whose primary interest was in some field of sci-
ence rather than in mathematics or statistics discovered
and rediscovered certain basic nonparametric ap-
proaches attests to the conceptual simplicity and spon-
taneity of these approaches. The same can hardly be
said of the competing normal-theory methods, which
presuppose a sound background in probability theory
for their justification. Why is it, then, that the ultimate
achievement of an introductory statistics course is so
often perceived to be the discussion of the one- and
two-sample t tests? How often have I been asked, after
outlining my nonparametric version of the introductory
statistics course, But where is the t test? How can you
let a student go into the wide world without ever having
encountered a single t statistic? Perhaps if we stop di-
viding statistics into parametrics and nonparametrics,
this kind of prejudice will disappear. Statistics will be
the better for it!
[Received May 1983. Revised December 1983. J
REFERENCES
ARBUTHNOT, JOHN (1710), "An Argument for Divine Provi-
dence, Taken From the Constant Regularity Observed in the Births
of Both Sexes," Philosophical Transactions, 27, 186-190.
BEHRENS, W.U. (1929), "Ein Beitrag zur Fehlerberechnung bei
wenigen Beobachtungen," Landwirtschaftliche Jahrbucher, 68,
807-837.
- - (1933), Mathematische Methoden [ur Versuchsansteller, Stutt-
gart: Eugen Ulmer.
COCHRAN, WILLIAM G. (1937), "The Efficiencies of the Bino-
mial Series Test of Significance of a Mean and of a CorreIaton
Coefficient," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Ser. A, 100,
69-73.
177
 EISENHART, CHURCHILL, and BIRNBAUM, ALLAN (1967),
"Anniversaries in 1966-67 of Interest to Statisticians," The Amer-
ican Statistician, 21(3), 22-29.
HAJEK, JAROSLAV (1961), "Some Extensions of the Wald-
Wolfowitz-Noether Theorem," The Annals of Mathematical Statis-
tics, 32, 506-523.
HOTELLING, HAROLD, and PABST, MARGARET R. (1936),
"Rank Correlation and Tests of Significance Involving No As-
sumption of Normality," The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 7,
29-43.
KRUSKAL, WILLIAM H. (1957), "Historical Notes on the Wil-
coxon Unpaired Two-Sample Test," Journal of the American Sta-
tistical Association, 52, 356-360.
LEHMANN, E.L. (1963), "Nonparametric Confidence Intervals for
a Shift Parameter," The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 34,
1507-1512.
NOETHER, GOTTFRIED E. (1949a), "Confidence Limits in the
Nonparametric Case," Journal of the American Statistical Associ-
ation, 44, 89-100.
- - - (1949b), "On a Theorem by Wald and Wolfowitz ," The An-
nals of Mathematical Statistics, 20, 455-458.
- - - (1950), "Asymptotic Properties of the Wald-Wolfowitz Test
of Randomness," The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 21,
231-246.
Downloaded by [Michigan State University] at 11:32 18 January 2015
- - - (1955), "On a Theorem of Pitman," The Annals of Mathe-
matical Statistics, 26, 64-68.
- - (1967), "Needed-A New Name" (Letter to the Editor), The
American Statistician, 21, 41.
- - - (1974), "W.U. Behrens and Nonparametric Statistics," Bio-
metrische Zeitschrift, 16,97-101.
- - - (1979), Comments on Professor J. Neyman's Pfizer Collo-
quium Lecture, "Clustering: Reminiscences of Some Episodes in
My Research Activities," Washington, D.C.: American Statistical
Association, Continuing Education Videotapes.
- - - (1982), "Discussion of Koopmans' New Introductory
Course," in Teaching of Statistics and Statistical Consulting, eds.
J .S. Rustagi and D.A. Wolfe, New York: Academic Press.
PITMAN, E.J.G. (1948), Lecture Notes on Non-Parametric Statistics
(dittoed), New York: Columbia University.
178 The American Statistician, August 1984, Vol. 38, No.3
SAVAGE, 1. RICHARD (1953), "Bibliography of Nonparametric
Statistics and Related Topics," Journal of the American Statistical
Association, 48, 844-906.
- - (1962), Bibliography of Nonparametric Statistics, Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press.
SCHI;:FFE, HENRY (1943), "Statistical Inference in the Non-
parametric Case," The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 14,
305-332.
SIEGEL, SIDNEY (1956), Nonparametric Statistics for the Behav-
ioral Sciences, New York: McGraw-Hill.
THOMPSON, WILLIAM R. (1936), "On Confidence Ranges for the
Median and Other Expectation Distributions for Populations of
Unknown Distribution Form," The Annals of Mathematical Statis-
tics, 7, 122-128.
WALD, A. (1943), "An Extension of Wilks' Method for Setting
Tolerance Limits," The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 14,
45-55.
WALD, A., and WOLFOWITZ, J. (1939), "Confidence Limits for
Continuous Distribution Functions," The Annals of Mathematical
Statistics, 10, 105-118.
- - - (1944), "Statistical Tests Based on Permutations of the Ob-
servations," The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 15, 358-372.
WALLIS, W. ALLEN (1952), "Rough-and-Ready Statistical Tests,"
Industrial Quality Control, 8(5), 35-40.
WALSH, JOHN E. (1968), Handbook of Nonparametric Statistics
(Vols. 1-3), Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand.
WILCOXON, FRANK (1949), Some Rapid Approximate Statistical
Procedures, New York: American Cyanamid Company.
WILKS, S.S. (1942), "Statistical Prediction With Special Reference
to the Problem of Tolerance Limits," The Annals of Mathematical
Statistics, 13, 400-409.
WOLFOWITZ, J. (1942), "Additive Partition Functions and a Class
of Statistical Hypotheses," The Annals of Mathematical Statistics,
13. 247-279.
- - - (1949), "Non-Parametric Statistical Inference," Proceedings
of the Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Proba-
bility, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 93-113.