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Box’s M statistic is applied M = X l (nl − l) ! ln Spooled − X l ((nl − 1) ln |Sl|) where nl is the sample size for the lth group, Sl is the lth group sample covariance matrix and Spooled is the pooled sample covariance matrix given by Spooled = P 1 l(nl − 1) ((n1 − 1)S1 + (n2 − 1)S2 + · · · + (ng − 1)Sg) If the null hypothesis is true, the individual sample covariance matrices are not expected to differ too much and, consequently, do not differ too much from the pooled covariance matrix. Thus, Box’s M statistic will be small. Set u = X l 1 nl − 1 − P 1 l(nl − 1) ! 2p2 + 3p − 1 6(p + 1)(g − 1)
where p is the number of variables. Then C = (1 − u)M has an approximate 2 distribution with v = 1 2 p(p + 1)(g − 1) degrees of freedom. At significance level , reject H0 if C > 2 v(). Box’s 2 approximation works well if each nl exceeds 20 and if p and g do not exceed 5.
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