# Publication: Lawstat: an R package for law, public policy and biostatistics

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Title Lawstat: an R package for law, public policy and biostatistics
Authors/Editors* Hui, W., Gel, Y. and J. L. Gastwirth.
Where published* Journal of Statistical Software
How published* Journal
Year* 2008
Volume 28
Number 3
Pages 1--26
Publisher
Keywords Goodness-of-fit tests, robust measures of location and scale, tests for symmetry, tests for randomness, tests for homogeneity of proportions, tests for equality of variances
We present a new \proglang{R} software package {\bf lawstat} that contains statistical tests and procedures that are utilized in various litigations on securities law, antitrust law, equal employment and discrimination as well as in public policy and biostatistics. Along with the well known tests such as the Bartels test, runs test, tests of homogeneity of several sample proportions, the Brunner-Munzel tests, the Lorenz curve, the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel test and others, the package contains new distribution-free robust tests for symmetry, robust tests for normality that are more sensitive to heavy-tailed departures, measures of relative variability, Levene-type tests against trends in variances etc. All implemented tests and methods are illustrated by simulations and real-life examples from legal cases, economics and biostatistics. Although the package is called \pkg{lawstat}, it presents implementation and discussion of statistical procedures and tests that are also employed in a variety of other applications, e.g. biostatistics, environmental studies, social sciences and others, in other words, all applications utilizing statistical data analysis. Hence, name of the package should not be considered as a restriction to legal statistics. The package will be useful to applied statisticians and quantitatively alert practitioners" of other subjects as well as an asset in teaching statistical courses. The package is available from the Comprehensive \proglang{R} Archive Network at \url{http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lawstat}.}