Sign Test for Freshman 15?The table below lists some of the weights from Data Set 4 in Appendix B. Those weights were measured from college students in September and later in April of their freshman year. Assume that we plan to use the sign test to test the claim of no difference between September weights and April weights. What requirements must be satisfied for this test? Is there any requirement that the populations must have a normal distribution or any other specific distribution? In what sense is this sign test a “distribution-free test”?
Solution 1BSC Step 1 The weights were measured from college students in September and later in April of their freshman year. By assuming that we plan to use the sign test to test the claim of no difference between September weights and April weights. Here we need to check the requirements whether the sample data are collected according to simple random sampling where every unit of the population has an equal chance of being selected as a sample. Here the weight of the students are taken at random irrespective of their groups. Step 2 There is no requirements that the populations must have a normal distribution or any other specific distribution since we make use of sign test to test the sign of differences.
