Nominal Association Vector and Matrix

Abstract

When response variables are nominal and populations are cross-classified with respect to multiple polytomies, questions often arise about the degree of association of the responses with explanatory variables. When populations are known, we introduce a nominal association vector and matrix to evaluate the dependence of a response variable with an explanatory variable. These measures provide detailed evaluations of nominal associations at both local and global levels. We also define a general class of global association measures which embraces the well known association measure by Goodman-Kruskal (1954). The proposed association matrix also gives rise to the expected generalized confusion matrix in classification. The hierarchy of equivalence relations defined by the association vector and matrix are also shown.