A comparison of approximations to the distribution of average kendall tau

The average Kendall tau test for the null hypothesis of compLete randomness in n judges' rankings of r objects was introduced by Ehrenberg (1952). The superior efficiency of this test. as measured by approximate Bahadur slope has been established by Alva, Cabilio, and Feigin (1982).

The purpose of this paper is first to provide further justification for the use of this test, and second to compare the accuracy of the asymptotic distribution to other app roxtmations to the null distribution for small values of r and n. In the process we generate tables for this exact dis tribution for r=3 and n=3(1)19, r=4 and n=3(1)9, r=5 and n=3(1)5.