previous up next contents
Up: Return to previous menu Next: 1 Introduction   Contents

Revisiting the \( \chi ^{2} \) test

Pierre L. Douillet

Abstract:

The \( Pearson's\, \chi ^{2}\) is the usual measure of the distance between a list of experimental results and the list of their expectations. In a first part, our paper exemplifies this protocol with the simulation of unfair die throwing (and everything works as in textbooks). In a second part, the same protocol is applied to fair die throwing... and almost everything is proven to go wrong. In a third part, this striking behavior is related to the nature of the set of all possible \( Pearson's\, \chi ^{2}\), which is quite continuous for a random unfair die, and coarse discrete for a fair die.




previous up next contents
Up: Return to previous menu Next: 1 Introduction   Contents


douillet@ensait.fr
2002-10-01