# How to obtain p-values for a given Kendall's Tau value (not calculated from data)

I want to obtain p-values for Parker's Tau-U (Parker et al., 2011). which is a measure based on Kendall's Tau.

Tau-U is related to Kendall's Tau in such a way that it's possible to translate a Tau-U value to a Kendall's Tau value.

This means that I can use the Kendall() function in the Kendall package in R to compute p-values for Tau-U. The only problem is that the Kendall() function only accepts two equal length data vectors for which it computes Kendall's Tau. However, I want to input a Kendall's Tau value directly (the Tau-U value expressed as a Kendall's Tau value) and then obtain a p-value for it.

Does any know if there are any R-functions that will allow me to input a Kendall's Tau value directly? There is other (non-free) software available that will do this for me (e.g. StatsDirect) but I need to find a way in R because I need the p-values for implementation in a permutation test (based on my own code).

• I would add that although the original answer was incorrect, it still might be instructive to have a look at what R is doing when it finds the p-value for Tau; as @cdeterman said in his first answer, this can be done using getAnywhere(cor.test.default) – Silverfish Dec 9 '14 at 21:59