An NHL executive says that players who incur penalty time during a game have a median time of 1.2 minutes in the penalty box. A random sample of 28 hockey players with penalty time produced 24 non-zero differences when a Wilcoxon signed rank test was used. The W (R+) equaled 156.5. The alternate hypothesis is m 1.2 minutes. Assume the population is symmetrically distributed. The computed test statistic in this instance equals:
A)156.5.
B)0.186.
C)6.5.
D)35.
E)143.5.

Question

An NHL executive says that players who incur penalty time during a game have a median time of 1.2 minutes in the penalty box. A random sample of 28 hockey players with penalty time produced 24 non-zero differences when a Wilcoxon signed rank test was used. The W (R+) equaled 156.5. The alternate hypothesis is m   1.2 minutes. Assume the population is symmetrically distributed. The computed test statistic in this instance equals:
A)156.5.
B)0.186.
C)6.5.
D)35.
E)143.5.

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The test statistic for the Wilcoxon signed rank test is calculated by comparing the sum of the ranks of the positive differences (R+) to its expected value under the null hypothesis. The given W (R+) is 156.5, but the test statistic is standardized to compare against a normal distribution, resulting in 0.186.

An NHL Executive Says That Players Who Incur Penalty Time