Chapter 13.2, Problem 21BB

Procedures for Handling Ties In the sign test procedure described in this section, we exclude ties (represented by 0 instead of a sign of + or -). A second approach is to treat half of the 0s as positive signs and half as negative signs. (If the number of 0s is odd, exclude one so that they can be divided equally.) With a third approach, in two-tailed tests make half of the 0s positive and half negative; in one-tailed tests make all 0s either positive or negative, whichever supports the null hypothesis. Repeat Example 4 “Body Temperatures” using the second and third approaches to handling ties. Do the different approaches lead to very different test statistics, P-values, and conclusions?