Fisher’s Exact Test of Independence

Fisher’s Exact Test of Independence is a statistical test used when you have two
nominal variables and want to find out if proportions for one nominal variable
are different among values of the other nominal variable. For experiments with
small numbers of participants (under around 1,000), Fisher’s is more accurate
than the chis square test or G-test.
Unlike other statistical tests, there isn’t a formula for Fisher’s. To get a result for
this test, calculate the probability of getting the observed data using the null
hypothesis that the proportions are the same for both sets.
Fisher’s Exact Test of Independence example situation
The test is most commonly applied to 2×2 matrices, and is computationally unwieldy for large m
or n. For tables larger than 2×2, the difference in proportion can no longer be used, but the
other measures mentioned above remain applicable (and in practice, the Pearson statistic is
most often used to order the tables). In the case of the 2×2 matrix, the P-value of the test can
be simply computed by the sum of all P-values which are <=P_(cutoff).
 Calculation
For an example application of the 2×2 test, let X be a journal, say either Mathematics Magazine or
Science, and let Y be the number of articles on the topics of mathematics and biology appearing in a
given issue of one of these journals. If Mathematics Magazine has five articles on math and one on
biology, and Science has none on math and four on biology, then the relevant matrix would be

Fisher’s Exact Test of Independence uses a contingency table to display the different
outcomes for an experiment.
 Computing gives

and the other possible matrices and their P’s are

(5)

(6)

(7)

(8)

which indeed sum to 1, as required. The sum of P-values less than or equal to Pcutoff=0.0238  is then 0.0476 which,
because it is less than 0.05, is significant. Therefore, in this case, there would be a statistically significant association
between the journal and type of article appearing.