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Yates's correction for continuity and the analysis of 2 × 2 contingency tables
Author(s) -
Haviland Mark G.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
statistics in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.996
H-Index - 183
eISSN - 1097-0258
pISSN - 0277-6715
DOI - 10.1002/sim.4780090403
Subject(s) - contingency table , statistics , econometrics , computer science , contingency , operations research , mathematics , philosophy , linguistics
Abstract Despite recommendations to the contrary, medical researchers still routinely use the Yates‐corrected chisquare statistic in analyses of 2 × 2 contingency tables. Research has shown that these ‘corrected’ statistics are overly conservative and that the conventional Pearson chi‐square generally provides adequate control over type I error probabilities. This paper makes a straightforward argument against use of Yates's correction for continuity and Fisher's exact probability test.