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The approximation to the chi-squared distribution breaks down if expected frequencies are too low. It will normally be acceptable so long as no more than 20% of the events have expected frequencies below 5. Where there is only 1 degree of freedom, the approximation is not reliable if expected frequencies are below 10.
Because the square of a standard normal distribution is the chi-squared distribution with one degree of freedom, the probability of a result such as 1 heads in 10 trials can be approximated either by using the normal distribution directly, or the chi-squared distribution for the normalised, squared difference between observed and expected value.
Pearson's chi-squared test is used to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference between the expected frequencies and the observed frequencies in one or more categories of a contingency table. For contingency tables with smaller sample sizes, a Fisher's exact test is used instead.
Pearson's chi-square test uses a measure of goodness of fit which is the sum of differences between observed and expected outcome frequencies (that is, counts of observations), each squared and divided by the expectation: = = where:
This reduces the chi-squared value obtained and thus increases its p-value. The effect of Yates's correction is to prevent overestimation of statistical significance for small data. This formula is chiefly used when at least one cell of the table has an expected count smaller than 5.
It is the distribution of the positive square root of a sum of squared independent Gaussian random variables. Equivalently, it is the distribution of the Euclidean distance between a multivariate Gaussian random variable and the origin. The chi distribution describes the positive square roots of a variable obeying a chi-squared distribution.
From this representation, the noncentral chi-squared distribution is seen to be a Poisson-weighted mixture of central chi-squared distributions. Suppose that a random variable J has a Poisson distribution with mean λ / 2 {\displaystyle \lambda /2} , and the conditional distribution of Z given J = i is chi-squared with k + 2 i degrees of freedom.
The null hypothesis is that the variables are independent. The numbers used in the calculation are the observed and expected frequencies of occurrence (from contingency tables). Chi-squared goodness of fit tests are used to determine the adequacy of curves fit to data. The null hypothesis is that the curve fit is adequate.