From: ted.dunning@gmail.com   
      
   On Jul 18, 1:35 am, Marina Sapir  wrote:   
   > If I understand it correctly, you just need to rank the items. Assign   
   > every item "number of items below it" minus "number of items above   
   > it". You will get the statistics called U-statistics. It will give you   
   > the rank of each item. Then, you just order all items by their ranks.   
   >   
      
   This doesn't actually work because the measurements of number items   
   above and below are themselves random variables.  This means that this   
   procedure will give you a ranking, but it will give you neither an   
   estimate of the quality of the ranking, a set of alternative   
   orderings, nor any intuition about which question to ask next.   
      
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