PACKAGE |STAT Data Manipulation and Analysis, by Gary Perlman
NAME ranksort - rank order columns
SYNOPSIS ranksort [-r] [-l lines]
DESCRIPTION ranksort reads the lines from the standard input and rank orders each column. Blank lines are ignored. Ties share the ranks, so if the 13th and 14th ranked numbers are equal, then each will be assigned the rank 13.5.

ranksort is used on data when the assumptions for procedures like the normal theory Pearson correlation coefficient are suspected to be false. Under such conditions, the Spearman rho rank order correlation coefficient is more appropriate. The Spearman rho is equal to the Pearson calculation on the data converted to ranks. The normal theory (F or t) significance test of the correlation coefficient is a good approximation to the two tailed test of the rank order correlation when the number of pairs is greater than 10. For smaller samples, a table should be consulted.

OPTIONS
-l lines
Set the maximum number of lines to be read.
-r
Reverse the order of the rankings. By default, rank orderings correlate with input data so that smaller numbers get smaller rank order values.
The following standard help options are supported. The program exits after displaying the help.
-L
Display limits
-O
Display options and values
-V
Display version number and date
EXAMPLE 
Input                    Output
0    5    0    2         1    6    1    5.5
1    6    10   3         2    7    2    7.5
2    7    20   3         3    8    3    7.5
3    8    30   4         4    9    4    9.5
4    9    40   4         5    10   5    9.5
5    0    50   0         6    1    6    1.5
6    1    60   0         7    2    7    1.5
7    2    70   1         8    3    8    3.5
8    3    80   1         9    4    9    3.5
9    4    90   2         10   5    10   5.5
LIMITS Use the -L option to determine the program limits.
SEE ALSO rankrel and rankind perform rank order statistics. The output of ranksort can be input to pair and regress for variations on ordinal statistics.
UPDATED November 28, 1986