This study offers a method of evaluating the stability of ranks of a data vector over time. In particular, we study improvement of a process observed over time where the data is ranked. The degree of competition at a major tennis championship (Wimbledon) as well as how trends in the level of...

A comparison of the balance sheet structure of the largest U.S. and Japanese firms for 1979 shows that Japanese firms significantly differ from U.S. firms in their greater reliance on bank-funded short-term debt, low levels and composition of net working capital, parsimonious use of...

This study focuses on individual home run hitting in Major League Baseball. It is observed that the distribution of the rate of home run hitting is highly right skewed, but it is becoming discernibly less so over time. Frequencies of the lowest rates have been decreasing, whereas the frequencies...

This article is an exploratory investigation of the distributional properties of market index returns using J. W. Tukey's g and h distributions. Specifically, it is shown that over sufficiently long periods of time, the distribution of the market index is adequately explained as a skewed,...

The athletic performances of men and women are compared based on worldrecord times for various distance events in swimming, running and skating. The ratio of the times of women to those of men against years is modelled through a modified exponential distribution. The rate of improvement is found...