Parametric versus nonparametric tests (March 9, 2004)

One of the biggest areas of disagreement among statisticians is when to use parametric or non-parametric statistics. I got an inquiry about this today, and quite honestly, I don't think it matters all that much. One consideration is sample size--if your sample is large, then the assumption of normality is easily met because of the central limit theorem. I wrote up a brief page on the central limit theorem and linked to a few pages that show how the central limit theorem works.

2008-07-08. page. Category: Unusual data