Statistics for Quality 129
about the ratio of two variances uses a test statistic that has a F distribu-
tion� All these models assume that the populations concerned have a normal
distribution� There are testing procedures that do not require an assump-
tion of normality for the population; these are known as “distribution-free”
or “nonparametric” tests� Any book in statistics will give further details on
these methods�
We made an assumption in the foregoing discussions of condence inter-
vals and hypothesis testing that the populations concerned were normal� We
will make similar assumptions when using other statistical tools discussed
in other chapters in this book� Although we may be justied in making this
assumption in many situations, ...