Roulette wheels, genetics and the χ~2 goodness-of-fit test

摘要

Pearson wanted to characterise what he called the 'laws of chance'. On holiday in 1892, he tossed shilling coins 2400 times (240 groups of ten tosses at a time), recording heads or tails. One of his former pupils tossed a penny coin 8178 times, and also drew 1000 sets of nine lottery tickets from a bag containing 90 tickets, ten of each digit.