NAG Library Routine Document

the Smirnov approximation is used. For all other cases the Kolmogorov approximation is used. These two approximations are discussed in Kim and Jenrich (1973).

4

References

Conover W J (1980) Practical Nonparametric Statistics Wiley

Feller W (1948) On the Kolmogorov–Smirnov limit theorems for empirical distributions Ann. Math. Statist. 19 179–181

Kendall M G and Stuart A (1973) The Advanced Theory of Statistics (Volume 2) (3rd Edition) Griffin

Kim P J and Jenrich R I (1973) Tables of exact sampling distribution of the two sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov criterion

D_{m n} (m < n)

Selected Tables in Mathematical Statistics 1 80–129 American Mathematical Society

Siegel S (1956) Non-parametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences McGraw–Hill

Smirnov N (1948) Table for estimating the goodness of fit of empirical distributions Ann. Math. Statist. 19 279–281

5

Arguments

1: $n1$ – IntegerInput: On entry: the number of observations in the first sample, $n_{1}$ .

Constraint: $n1 \geq 1$ .
2: $n2$ – IntegerInput: On entry: the number of observations in the second sample, $n_{2}$ .

Constraint: $n2 \geq 1$ .
3: $d$ – Real (Kind=nag_wp)Input: On entry: the test statistic $D_{n_{1}, n_{2}}$ , for the two sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov goodness-of-fit test, that is the maximum difference between the empirical cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) of the two samples.

Constraint: $0.0 \leq d \leq 1.0$ .
4: $ifail$ – IntegerInput/Output: On entry: ifail must be set to $0$ , $- 1 or 1$ . If you are unfamiliar with this argument you should refer to Section 3.4 in How to Use the NAG Library and its Documentation for details.
For environments where it might be inappropriate to halt program execution when an error is detected, the value $- 1 or 1$ is recommended. If the output of error messages is undesirable, then the value $1$ is recommended. Otherwise, if you are not familiar with this argument, the recommended value is $0$ . When the value $- 1 or 1$ is used it is essential to test the value of ifail on exit.

On exit: $ifail = 0$ unless the routine detects an error or a warning has been flagged (see Section 6).

6

Error Indicators and Warnings

If on entry

ifail = 0

- 1

, explanatory error messages are output on the current error message unit (as defined by x04aaf).

Errors or warnings detected by the routine:

$ifail = 1$: On entry, $n1 = 〈value〉$ and $n2 = 〈value〉$ .
Constraint: $n1 \geq 1$ and $n2 \geq 1$ .

$ifail = 2$: On entry, $d < 0.0$ or $d > 1.0$ : $d = 〈value〉$ .

$ifail = 3$: The Smirnov approximation used for large samples did not converge in $200$ iterations. The probability is set to $1.0$ .

$ifail = - 99$: An unexpected error has been triggered by this routine. Please contact NAG.
See Section 3.9 in How to Use the NAG Library and its Documentation for further information.

$ifail = - 399$: Your licence key may have expired or may not have been installed correctly.
See Section 3.8 in How to Use the NAG Library and its Documentation for further information.

$ifail = - 999$: Dynamic memory allocation failed.
See Section 3.7 in How to Use the NAG Library and its Documentation for further information.

7

Accuracy

The large sample distributions used as approximations to the exact distribution should have a relative error of less than 5% for most cases.

8

Parallelism and Performance

g01ezf is not threaded in any implementation.

9

Further Comments

The upper tail probability for the one-sided statistics,

D_{n_{1}, n_{2}}^{+}

D_{n_{1}, n_{2}}^{-}

, can be approximated by halving the two-sided upper tail probability returned by g01ezf, that is

p / 2

. This approximation to the upper tail probability for either

D_{n_{1}, n_{2}}^{+}

D_{n_{1}, n_{2}}^{-}

is good for small probabilities, (e.g.,

p \leq 0.10

) but becomes poor for larger probabilities.

The time taken by the routine increases with

n_{1}

and

n_{2}

, until

n_{1} n_{2} > 10000

\max (n_{1}, n_{2}) \geq 2500

. At this point one of the approximations is used and the time decreases significantly. The time then increases again modestly with

n_{1}

and

n_{2}

10

Example

The following example reads in

10

different sample sizes and values for the test statistic

D_{n_{1}, n_{2}}

. The upper tail probability is computed and printed for each case.

NAG Library Routine Document

g01ezf (prob_kolmogorov2)

▸▿ Contents

1 Purpose

2 Specification

3 Description

4 References

5 Arguments

6 Error Indicators and Warnings

7 Accuracy

8 Parallelism and Performance

9 Further Comments

10 Example

10.1 Program Text

10.2 Program Data

10.3 Program Results

1

Purpose

2

Specification

3

Description