Example of Mann-Whitney Test

A state highway department uses two brands of paint for painting stripes on roads. A highway official wants to know whether the durability of the two brands of paint are different. For each paint, the official records the number of months the paint persists on the highway.

The official performs a Mann-Whitney test to determine whether the median number of months that the paint persists differs between the two brands.

  1. Open the sample data, HighwayPaint.MTW.
  2. Choose Stat > Nonparametrics > Mann-Whitney.
  3. In First Sample enter Brand A.
  4. In Second Sample, enter Brand B.
  5. Click OK.

Interpret the results

The null hypothesis states that the difference in the median number of months that the paint persists between the two brands is 0. Because the p-value is 0.0019, which is less than the significance level of 0.05, the official rejects the null hypothesis. The official concludes that the difference in the median number of months the paints persists between the two brands is not 0. The 95.5 Percent CI indicates that the population median of Brand B is likely to be greater than Brand A.

Method

η₁: median of Brand A
η₂: median of Brand B
Difference: η₁ - η₂

Descriptive Statistics

SampleNMedian
Brand A1136.0
Brand B1037.6

Estimation for Difference

DifferenceCI for
Difference
Achieved
Confidence
-1.85(-3, -0.9)95.52%

Test

Null hypothesisH₀: η₁ - η₂ = 0
Alternative hypothesisH₁: η₁ - η₂ ≠ 0
MethodW-ValueP-Value
Not adjusted for ties76.500.002
Adjusted for ties76.500.002