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Activity Number: 160 - Editor's Choice: Papers Published in the American Statistician During 2018
Type: Topic Contributed
Date/Time: Monday, July 29, 2019 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
Sponsor: Biometrics Section
Abstract #301746 Presentation
Title: On Mixture Alternatives and Wilcoxon’s Signed-Rank Test
Author(s): Jonathan Rosenblatt* and Yoav Benjamini
Companies: Ben Gurion University of the Negev and Tel Aviv University
Keywords: testing
Abstract:

The shift alternative model has been the canonical alternative hypothesis since the early days of statistics. This holds true both in parametric and nonparametric testing. In this talk, we depart from shift alternatives, into *mixture* alternatives. We trace back the history of mixture alternatives, dating back to Good's 1979 Contamination Alternatives. We then present some modern applications where mixture alternatives are more appropriate than shift alternatives; examples include personalized medicine, and medical imaging. Finally, we present several candidate test statistics to detect such alternatives. In particular, we show that when detecting mixtures, Wilcoxon's signed-rank test may (surprisingly) be more powerful than a t-test, even under a Gaussian null.


Authors who are presenting talks have a * after their name.

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