Misplaced Pages

Chi-squared test

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Aatombomb (talk | contribs) at 19:29, 25 September 2013. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 19:29, 25 September 2013 by Aatombomb (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
This article may require cleanup to meet Misplaced Pages's quality standards. No cleanup reason has been specified. Please help improve this article if you can. (April 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Not to be confused with the special case: Pearson's chi-squared test

Preface: The Chi-Square distribution is the distribution of the sum of the squares of a set of normally distributed random variables. Its value stems from the fact that the sum of random variables from any distribution can be closely approximated by a normal distribution as the sum includes a greater and greater number of samples. Thus the test is widely applicable for all distributions.


A chi-squared test, also referred to as chi-square test or χ 2 {\displaystyle \chi ^{2}} test, is any statistical hypothesis test in which the sampling distribution of the test statistic is a chi-squared distribution when the null hypothesis is true. Also considered a chi-squared test is a test in which this is asymptotically true, meaning that the sampling distribution (if the null hypothesis is true) can be made to approximate a chi-squared distribution as closely as desired by making the sample size large enough.

Some examples of chi-squared tests where the chi-squared distribution is only approximately valid:

One case where the distribution of the test statistic is an exact chi-squared distribution is the test that the variance of a normally distributed population has a given value based on a sample variance. Such a test is uncommon in practice because values of variances to test against are seldom known exactly.

Chi-squared test for variance in a normal population

If a sample of size n is taken from a population having a normal distribution, then there is a well-known result (see distribution of the sample variance) which allows a test to be made of whether the variance of the population has a pre-determined value. For example, a manufacturing process might have been in stable condition for a long period, allowing a value for the variance to be determined essentially without error. Suppose that a variant of the process is being tested, giving rise to a small sample of n product items whose variation is to be tested. The test statistic T in this instance could be set to be the sum of squares about the sample mean, divided by the nominal value for the variance (i.e. the value to be tested as holding). Then T has a chi-squared distribution with n − 1 degrees of freedom. For example if the sample size is 21, the acceptance region for T for a significance level of 5% is the interval 9.59 to 34.17.

See also

References

  • Weisstein, Eric W. "Chi-Squared Test". MathWorld.
  • Corder, G.W., Foreman, D.I. (2009). Nonparametric Statistics for Non-Statisticians: A Step-by-Step Approach Wiley, ISBN 978-0-470-45461-9
  • Greenwood, P.E., Nikulin, M.S. (1996) A guide to chi-squared testing. Wiley, New York. ISBN 0-471-55779-X
  • Nikulin, M.S. (1973). "Chi-squared test for normality". In: Proceedings of the International Vilnius Conference on Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics, v.2, pp. 119–122.
  • Bagdonavicius, V., Nikulin, M.S. (2011) "Chi-square goodness-of-fit test for right censored data". The International Journal of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, p. 30-50.
Statistics
Descriptive statistics
Continuous data
Center
Dispersion
Shape
Count data
Summary tables
Dependence
Graphics
Data collection
Study design
Survey methodology
Controlled experiments
Adaptive designs
Observational studies
Statistical inference
Statistical theory
Frequentist inference
Point estimation
Interval estimation
Testing hypotheses
Parametric tests
Specific tests
Goodness of fit
Rank statistics
Bayesian inference
Correlation
Regression analysis
Linear regression
Non-standard predictors
Generalized linear model
Partition of variance
Categorical / Multivariate / Time-series / Survival analysis
Categorical
Multivariate
Time-series
General
Specific tests
Time domain
Frequency domain
Survival
Survival function
Hazard function
Test
Applications
Biostatistics
Engineering statistics
Social statistics
Spatial statistics
Categories: