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Re: Bug in Fisher Exact test?

To: "'sundar.dorai-raj@PDF.COM'" <sundar.dorai-raj@PDF.COM>, Salomon Minkin <minkin@uhnres.utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: Bug in Fisher Exact test?
From: "Austin, Matt" <maustin@amgen.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 19:00:10 -0700
Cc: S-PLUS Newsgroup <s-news@lists.biostat.wustl.edu>
Just looking at this quickly it seems that the S-Plus implementation seems
to have some problems with the number of rows is less than the number of
columns.  I did a few (very limited) test cases and this was consistent if
there was a discrepancy.  For example, just transpose your matrix and the
results are as expected.

--Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: s-news-owner@lists.biostat.wustl.edu
[mailto:s-news-owner@lists.biostat.wustl.edu]On Behalf Of Sundar
Dorai-Raj
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 17:45 PM
To: Salomon Minkin
Cc: S-PLUS Newsgroup
Subject: Re: [S] Bug in Fisher Exact test?




Salomon Minkin wrote:

> I'm running Version 6.2 on Unix.
> 
> I'm surprised that I'm getting  zero  p-values when I'm running the
> Fisher exact test on some 3 x 2 tables. Here are two examples:
> 
> 
>>fisher.test(matrix(c(0,1,2,0,0,3),nrow=2))
> 
> 
>            Fisher's exact test
> data:   matrix(c(0, 1, 2, 0, 0 ,3), nrow = 2)
> p-value = 0
> alternative hypothesis: two.sided
> 
> 
>>fisher.test(matrix(c(0,5,3,1,0,1),nrwo=2))
> 
> 
>            Fisher's exact test
> data:   matrix(c(0, 5, 3, 1, 0 ,1), nrow = 2)
> p-value = 0
> alternative hypothesis: two.sided
> 
> Clearly, there is a positive probability of observing these particular
> tables keeping the margins fixed. According to my hand calculations,
> the probability of observing the first table is 0.067, and for the
> second table
> the probability is 0.033.
> 
> Why do I get a p-value of zero?
> 

In R, I get your hand-calculated answers. Not sure how it is different 
in S-PLUS.

R> fisher.test(matrix(c(0,1,2,0,0,3),nrow=2))

        Fisher's Exact Test for Count Data

data:  matrix(c(0, 1, 2, 0, 0, 3), nrow = 2)
p-value = 0.06667
alternative hypothesis: two.sided

R> fisher.test(matrix(c(0,5,3,1,0,1),nrow=2))

        Fisher's Exact Test for Count Data

data:  matrix(c(0, 5, 3, 1, 0, 1), nrow = 2)
p-value = 0.03333
alternative hypothesis: two.sided



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