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Gapping

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2025

Howard Wainer*
Affiliation:
Bureau of Social Science Research
Stephen Schacht
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago
*
Requests for reprints should be sent to Dr. Howard Wainer, Bureau of Social Science Research, Inc., 1990 M Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.

Abstract

Tukey's scheme for finding separations in univariate data strings is described and tested. It is found that one can use the size of a data gap coupled with its ordinal position in the distribution to determine the likelihood of its having arisen by chance. It was also shown that this scheme is relatively robust for fatter-tailed-than-Gaussian distributions and has some interesting implications in multidimensional situations.

Keywords

Type
Original Paper
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 The Psychometric Society

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Footnotes

Our thanks to John W. Tukey who read a preliminary version of the manuscript and made many helpful suggestions.

References

Reference Notes

Tukey, J. W. Personal communication, August, 1977.Google Scholar
Kinderman, A. J., Ramage, J. G., & Monohan, J. F. Computer methods for sampling from students' t distribution, 1975, Pennsylvania: Carnegie-Mellon University, Department of Statistics.Google Scholar

References

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