MathBench > Statistical Tests

Goodness of Fit Tests

The Brute Force method again.

Evil Pointy-Haired Boss (who has nothing better to do than sit around flipping coins), challenges Dilbert to a game of heads-or-tails. In his first ten flips, the coin comes up heads every time but one. Boss claims to be just lucky, but Dilbert thinks he's playing with a loaded coin. Who is right?

General Steps

Does the boss cheat?

1. Decide on a null hypothesis -- a "model" that the data should fit
2. Note your "expected" and "observed" values
3. Simulate lots of data
4. Decide what your "threshold of pain" is (otherwise known as a p-value). *Note: technically this should come before simulating your data!
5. Determine whether the agreement of the simulated data with the observed data falls within the threshhold -- if so, we say the model fits the data well.

Verdict: The boss cheats (but you knew that already, right?).