Home>>Notes for students>>Biostatistics>>Difference between parametric test and non-parametric test
BiostatisticsNotes for studentsPublic health blogs

Difference between parametric test and non-parametric test

Share it on

What is parametric test

A parametric test is a statistical test which makes certain assumptions about the distribution of the unknown parameter of interest and thus the test statistic  is valid under these assumptions. A significance test  under a Simple Normal Model for example has the assumption that the parameter has a normal distribution behaves like an independent variable  (is the result of an independent process) is  identically distributed and has a constant mean and variance.

Some Parametric tests

  1. ANOVA
  2. Z-test
  3. F-test
  4. t-test

When to use Parametric tests

Tests condition to use
ANOVAcomparing the means of ( more than two samples)
F-testComparing variances of two samples
t-test Comparing mean to a value , or the means of two samples
Z-testas t-test for large samples

Non- Parametric Test

In statistics, nonparametric tests are methods of statistical analysis that do not require a distribution to meet the required assumptions to be analyzed (especially if the data is not normally distributed). Due to this reason, they are sometimes referred to as distribution-free tests. Nonparametric tests serve as an alternative to parametric tests such as T-test or ANOVA that can be employed only if the underlying data satisfies certain criteria and assumptions.

Some Non- Parametric Test

  1. Wilcoxon Signed Rank Pair test
  2. Mann-Whitney U test
  3. Mc Nemars test
  4. Chi-Squared Test

1. Mann-Whitney U Test

The Mann-Whitney U Test is a nonparametric version of the independent samples t-test. The test primarily deals with two independent samples that contain ordinal data.

2. Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test

The Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test is a nonparametric counterpart of the paired samples t-test. The test compares two dependent samples with ordinal data.

3. The Kruskal-Wallis Test

The Kruskal-Wallis Test is a nonparametric alternative to the one-way ANOVA. The Kruskal-Wallis test is used to compare more than two independent groups with ordinal data.

Parametric Test Non Parametric Test
These tests are applied only to the data which are measured in ratio and interval scale These tests are applied only to the data which are measured in Nominal and ordinal scale
These tests are more powerful These tests are less powerful than parametric tests
It requires complicated sampling theory It doesn’t required complicated sampling theory
It requires complicated computationIt requires simple computation and gives result quicky
These test are designed to test the hypothesis of one or more parameters of the population These test are designed to test the hypothesis which doesn’t involve any parameter .

Share it on

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *