Tuesday, April 17, 2007

types i, ii, and iii contingency tables

hereby some examples drawn from Sokal and Rohlf (1995: 724 et seq.), and edited and expanded a bit by me to (hopefully) clarify the distinction among Models I, II, and III contingency tables:

Type I: neither set of column totals set by investigator:

100 plants are examined, and their soil type and leaf texture is recorded:


Pubescent Leaves Smooth Leaves Total
Serpentine Soil 12 30 42
Non-serpentine Soil 47 11 58
Total 5941 100


Type II: one set of column totals set by investigator:

100 moths are exposed to bird predation: 50 light morphs and 50 dark morphs (note that the proportion doesn't have to be 50:50, though); investigator records whether moths are eaten or not:



Prey Survivor Total
Light Morph 39 11 50
Dark Morph 30 20 50
Total 69 31 100


Type III: both sets of column totals set by investigator:

one hundred beans are placed in a jar: 50 with thick skins and 50 with thin skins (again, doesn't have to be 50:50). seventy hungry weevil larvae -- each of which will burrow in to one unoccupied bean -- are added to the jar, and some time later the investigator records the numbers of each type of bean and whether or not it was attacked:



Attacked Not Attacked Total
Thick Skin a b 50
Thin Skin c d 50
Total 70 30 100


at first glance, it seems that having both the row totals and the column totals fixed will automatically fix the cell totals; this is not actually true, as the following values of a, b, c, and d will illustrate:

a = 20, b = 30, c = 50, d = 0;
a = 25, b = 25, c = 45, d = 5;
a = 35, b = 15, c = 35, d = 15;
etc.

Sokal and Rohlf indicate that they have "not yet encounted a [non-hypothetical] example of this model."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

hm, one might wonder what use a purely hypothetical model could serve...
...curiouser and curiouser. :P

Nicole Michel said...

a-ha - now it makes sense! Thanks!
:) Nicole

TK said...

That helped clear it up. It is interesting that there is a model that no one really uses that has little pratical application. Interesting!

Busy Tosser said...

Thanks Mike. I was wondering what you had found out about that Type I-III distinctions.