[R] Basis of fisher.test

[(Ted Harding)]

On 13-Jan-06 Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Jan 2006 Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
>>[...]
>> "?fisher.test" says only:
> 
> [That following is not a quote from a current version of R.]
> 
>>     In the one-sided 2 by 2 cases, p-values are obtained
>>     directly using the hypergeometric distribution.
>>     Otherwise, computations are based on a C version of
>>     the FORTRAN subroutine FEXACT which implements the
>>     network developed by Mehta and Patel (1986) and
>>     improved by Clarkson, Fan & Joe (1993). The FORTRAN
>>     code can be obtained from
>>     <URL: http://www.netlib.org/toms/643>.
> 
> No, it *also* says
> 
>       Two-sided tests are based on the probabilities of the tables, and
>       take as 'more extreme' all tables with probabilities less than or
>       equal to that of the observed table, the p-value being the sum of
>       such probabilities.
> 
> which answers the question (there are only two-sided tests for such 
> tables).

Thanks for the above information, which is indeed the definitive
straightforward answer to my question!

(Not sure that I quite agree with the "two-sided" terminology, though,
since the ranking is unidirectional based on decreasing probability,
and the P-value is that of the least-probability tail -- i.e. analagous
to the "large (-2*loglik)" tail of a likelihood-ratio test -- which
I've always visualised as a 1-tailed test (depite the fact that
the "other tail" can on occasion be indicative of a fit "too good to
be true").

> Now, what does the posting guide say about stating the R version and 
> updating before posting?

Well, I plead that in practice there is necessarily a grey area
here! My quotation was from "?fisher.test" in R-2.1.0beta of
2004/04/08, the most recent version installed on any of my machines.
Admittedly a bit behind the times, but not grossly; and that help
page has not changed in this respect since the earliest version I
have installed, which is R-1.2.3 of 2001/04/26.

Contents of help pages can change overnight as R evolves.
While it is better to be up-to-date than behind the times (even
slightly), there is a compromise to be struck between upgrading
to the latest R every time one has a question which might be
answered thereby, or going on-line to read the latest PDF
documentation from CRAN, on the one hand, and on the other asking
a straightforward question to the list.

Thanks again, and best wishes,
Ted.

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Date: 13-Jan-06                                       Time: 08:55:11
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