Premium
Statistical distribution of the difference of two proportions
Author(s) -
Nadarajah Saralees,
Kotz Samuel
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
statistics in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.996
H-Index - 183
eISSN - 1097-0258
pISSN - 0277-6715
DOI - 10.1002/sim.2701
Subject(s) - statistics , medical statistics , distribution (mathematics) , mathematics , econometrics , mathematical analysis
Abstract Differences of two proportions or rates occur most frequently in biomedical research. However, as far as published work in the Statistics in Medicine are concerned, only approximations have been used to study the distribution of such differences. In this Letter, we derive the exact probability distribution of the difference of two proportions. The expression involves a well‐known special function. It is expected that this result could be widely useful for medical practitioners. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.