Binary Variable Versus Rank Variable

Robert Gilmore Pontius, Clark University

Abstract

This chapter gives methods to compare a variable that shows binary Presence or Absence versus a variable that indicates the ranked priority for Presence. The method considers several thresholds to convert the rank variable to a binary variable, which reduces each threshold to the analysis of the binary versus binary case of Chap. 1. The method presents the results graphically as the Total Operating Characteristic, which is more informative than the outdated Relative Operating Characteristic. Relevant software includes the TOC Curve Generator (Liu 2020) available via https://lazygis.github.io/projects/TOCCurveGenerator and R’s TOC package available at https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/TOC/index.html (Pontius Jr et al. 2015).