Electronic Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics

Boston, Massachusetts, March 21-24, 2013

Paper C030

This is an electronic reprint, reproduced by permission of Pearson Education Inc. Originally appeared in the Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics, ISBN-10: 0133866726, Copyright (C) 2014 by Pearson Education, Inc.


Simulating Chi-Square Test Using Excel

Leslie Chandrakantha


John Jay College of Criminal Justice of CUNY

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ABSTRACT

Students in introductory statistics classes struggle to grasp the basic concepts. We illustrate the use of Excel's Data Table function and standard formulas to perform the Chi-square test for independence. The Chi-square test is an integral part in introductory statistics. Simulation using Excel is used to generate many random samples and calculate the p-value of the test. The empirical distribution of the statistic is also tabulated. This approach will improve the students' ability to understand the meaning of the p-value to interpret the results of hypothesis testing.

Keyword(s): statistics, spreadsheets