Negative ranks: what it means and how to read it
In the report: Negative Ranks — Pairs where the second column is smaller than the first (the difference second − first is negative), as SPSS.
How to read it
How many rows went down from the first measurement to the second, and the ranks of those changes.
In plain words
A teacher gave 30 students a test before a course and the same test after it. She wanted to know how many did worse the second time. She looked at Negative Ranks and got 7. That is the number of students whose second score was lower than their first. Now she can say: 7 of 30 students went down. She then looks at how many went up and how many stayed the same, to see the whole picture. The place numbers of those 7 drops in the line of all changes show whether the drops were big or small.
Example
The cell with Negative Ranks is selected in each report; point at a label to see its note.
- — the sample data (50 rows) the examples use
- — two-sided
=STATS_WILCOXON(Data!A1:T51, "before,after")
Where you see it
STATS_WILCOXON— Wilcoxon signed-rank test for two related measurements of the same rows (before / after) — the rank replacement for STATS_PAIRED when the differences are not normal.
Related values
- Positive ranks — Pairs where the second column is larger than the first (the difference second − first is positive).
- Ties — Pairs where the two values are equal; they are left out of the test.
- Test variant —
student— the classic test, which assumes equal variances in the groups;welch— Welch's test, which does not. - Variance ratio — The largest group variance divided by the smallest. 1 — the variances are equal.
- Group size ratio — The size of the largest group divided by the size of the smallest. 1 — all groups have the same number of values.
Get it in your sheet
One formula in a cell gives the whole report, Negative ranks included. ALS Stats is a free add-on for Google Sheets™.
Install ALS Stats from Google Workspace Marketplace (opens in a new tab)