I have a programme that fits a distribution model to my data's distribution, and gives me a value of chi square for the goodness-of-fit of the model. I need to find out whether this is significant but am struggling to figure out the degrees of freedom in order to look up my chi-squre values in a table.

Is it one - as comparing two models (so df = n-1)
Or is it based on the number of observations that make up my data distibution ~75
Or is it based on the number of bins in the histogram that I am comparing accross. I constrained the histograms run from 800-3000 and have a bin size of 100 so have 22 bins.
Or is there something else I'm not thinking of....

Cheers for any suggestions

and my answers...........

(1) I was offered another 9 month contract at my Teaching Assistant job and would have carried on doing that then tried to get a PhD to start a year later probably staying in the city where I worked previously. I would possibly now be going into my third year rather than my forth year and probably be living in the North West rather than the south coast of England.

(2) Is tricky. There’s a lot about my PhD I’ve not liked, but on balance I’ve had a good experience, I get on with my supervisors and feel I’ve learnt a lot. I really like the city I now live in and wouldn’t have met some fantastic friends if I’d not moved here. On the other hand my boyfriend has struggled with work and the cost of living is higher here so we could be better off had we stayed in the North West. It would certainly be interesting to be able to pay a visit to that alternative future….but whether I’d then stay there??????

Dunno why I was thinking about this today.

(1) What do you think you'd be doing if you hadn't got/accpeted/applied for your PhD?
(2) Would you rather be in that alternative future?

Hi Grit84. I don't really have any advice because I'm in the same position.....except I'm actually in my 4th year! I really need to get motivation to write but at the moment I'm doing anything and everything instead. Not been well for last two weeks which doesn't help. I keep thinking "next week will be different"

Thank you for this thread Jepsonclough, it made me go :$ (closest to panic I could find) I haven't backed up in a while. Guess what I'll be doing today?!

Nothing worse than that panicky, I've lost all my work feeling. They should invent a data stick that screams if you leave it! (then again maybe I shouold invent one and take it on dragons den!)

I could possibly help but would need way more information on what the data looks like now and what you want to achieve.

If it helps I went on a functions and formulae course for Excel 2007 and could PM you the work -book pdf tommorrow.

For some reason I can't vote on the poll. I comein 4-5 days a week though.
HAving commuted before I wouldn't really recommend it, but guess if you were disciplined it's a good time for reading.

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Sugar. Just wrote reply and deleted it. Hope I can remember the gist....

and apparently it was there all along!

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Anyway I can sympathise with feeling down and teary when very tired. That said you mention that you are not a fitness person, and you have recently started this intense exercise regime....is it possible you are doing too much too soon, or that you are now overtraining and not getting enough recovery time or eating enough, or the right foods to recover?

I was also wondering why ironman as opposed to other challenges? (not suggesting you shouldn't do it, just wondering what drew you to that specifically) I /only/ managed a marathon during my PhD, though I have vague plans to get into tris and do an ironman at some point in the future, but I don't feel I have the time or inclination to train for one right now. I am very impressed with you for doing it.
(up)

I don't know what other forums you use but i also look at runnersworld.co.uk they have a trathlon forum where lots of people do ironmans (ironmen?!) and may be able to give help and advice should you want any.

Good luck with the challenge

I'd say it depends what the analysis is. If they directly compare boys and girls it seems unbalanced but if they simply do the analysis twice, comparing faces and objects for girls, then faces and objects for boys it's balanced.

OK. Think i've made sense of it.....to be a factorial design you'd need to randomly change the lab temp from cold to hot for each run or the experiement, which would be ridiculous. Instead it's a split-plot desgn as you split into the two separate labs the run the feed size experiment.

Nothing I've read up on suggests that the mice have to do all three levels of the feed experiment (most things talk about random allocation to one of the conditions) so I'll go with option 2 as correct.

Now if only I could bring myself to look at my own PhD work instead of daytime TV!

Just spent 20 mins reading about split-plot designs and can't get my head around it! Gonna blame the fact I'm off sick today and brain not working! I can't really see why either of your examples are not factorial designs rather than split plot. Hopefully someone else will come along and answer this one.

I went on Eurostart for a day trip to Paris a few years ago in December. It is possible but I'd say have a plan of what you want to do before hand. There's lots to see and although 11 hours seems a lot of time, it goes very quickly. We tried to go up the Eifel tower but due to the queues never made it to the top because doing so we would have missed the last train back to London.
Also (dunno if this was the norm) but Paris was surprising cold compared to London so wrap up warm (sound like your parent now :p)

I've been watching.
Has anyone noticed that they a lot of them (particularly the guys) have very blue eyes?
Melissa came accross so much better on "the apprentice you're fired" afterwards.