Testing the population coefficient of variation

Abstract

The coefficient of variation (CV), which is used in many scientific areas, measures the variability of a population relative to its mean and standard deviation. Several methods exist for testing the population CV. This article compares a proposed bootstrap method to existing methods. A simulation study was conducted under both symmetric and skewed distributions to compare the performance of test statistics with respect to empirical size and power. Results indicate that some of the proposed methods are useful and can be recommended to practitioners. © 2012 JMASM, Inc.