22-08-2025, 07:53 AM
To evaluate whether the distribution of topics depends on another categorical variable (e.g., language A vs. B, or the 5 scribal hands), I used a chi-square test of independence.
For this, I used the contingency tables that are plotted in my post (the heatmaps of topic vs. language / topic vs. hand).
- Rows represent the different topics.
- Columns represent the categories of the variable of interest (e.g., Language A, B, or Hand 1–5).
-Each cell contains the observed frequency (the count of how often a given topic occurs with that category).
The null hypothesisis is:
H₀: topics are independent of language/hand.
The p-value is the probability of obtaining a chi-square statistic at least as extreme as the observed one, assuming the null hypothesis is true.
A low p-value (e.g., < 0.05) means we reject the null hypothesis, suggesting that the distribution of topics depends on the language or scribal hand.
A high p-value means we cannot reject the null, suggesting no evidence of dependence.
In both cases, we have a very low p-value (lowest when we analyze the topics vs. hands), rejecting the null hipotesis that topics are independent of.language/hand.
For this, I used the contingency tables that are plotted in my post (the heatmaps of topic vs. language / topic vs. hand).
- Rows represent the different topics.
- Columns represent the categories of the variable of interest (e.g., Language A, B, or Hand 1–5).
-Each cell contains the observed frequency (the count of how often a given topic occurs with that category).
The null hypothesisis is:
H₀: topics are independent of language/hand.
The p-value is the probability of obtaining a chi-square statistic at least as extreme as the observed one, assuming the null hypothesis is true.
A low p-value (e.g., < 0.05) means we reject the null hypothesis, suggesting that the distribution of topics depends on the language or scribal hand.
A high p-value means we cannot reject the null, suggesting no evidence of dependence.
In both cases, we have a very low p-value (lowest when we analyze the topics vs. hands), rejecting the null hipotesis that topics are independent of.language/hand.