A weighted rank measure of correlation

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2005

Authors

Da Costa, JP (Author) FCUP; Soares, C (Author) FEP

Journal

Title: Australian and New Zealand Journal of Statistics

Vol. 47

Pages: 515-529

ISSN: 1369-1473

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 44 Citations

Scopus - 63 Citations

Scientific classification

FOS: Natural sciences > Mathematics

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-000-04D

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-842x.2005.00413.x

Abstract (EN): Spearman's rank correlation coefficient is not entirely suitable for measuring the correlation between two rankings in some applications because it treats all ranks equally. In 2000, Blest proposed an alternative measure of correlation that gives more importance to higher ranks but has some drawbacks. This paper proposes a weighted rank measure of correlation that weights the distance between two ranks using a linear function of those ranks, giving more importance to higher ranks than lower ones. It analyses its distribution and provides a table of critical values to test whether a given value of the coefficient is significantly different from zero. The paper also summarizes a number of applications for which the new measure is more suitable than Spearman's.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 15