Solved – Chi square goodness of fit test

chi-squared-testself-study

The table below displays the number of accidents recorded at a particular intersection
during each of the four seasons last year:

    Season           Spring Summer Fall Winter
    no. of accidents 13      24     18  25

We would like to conduct a chi-square goodness-of-fit test to determine whether accidents
are uniformly distributed over the four seasons.The value of the test statistic for the
appropriate test of significance is?

I'm not quite sure how to proceed with this one.. Binomial distribution would not work, I think, since it's asking for a uniform distribution. How would I compute p-hat?

Best Answer

Since we are testing for a uniform distribution, the values of each season should be equal. The most likely value for each season assuming a uniform distribution is the average of all the seasons.

(13+24+18+25)/4 = 80/4 = 20

The formula for the Chi-Squared Statistic is given here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson's_chi-squared_test

((13-20)^2)/20 = 2.45
((24-20)^2)/20 = 0.80
((18-20)^2)/20 = 0.20
((25-20)^2)/20 = 1.25

Chi-Squared Statistic

2.45 + 0.80 + 0.20 + 1.25 = 4.7

The degrees of freedom are

df=4-1=3

You should be able to figure out the rest.

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