Chi-squared distributions in variance components models with many parameters: Update from Chris Amos ============================================================================ It was pointed out to me at about 5:10 pm on Monday, that in fact when one has a complicated mixture of chi-squared variates and observes a test statistic that the p-value is actually just the sum of the p-values from each of the mixtures times the weights. In my talk, I was somewhat confused by the fact that in my own research I had been trying to find critical values for a certain significance level and that does require integrating over the mixtures, which is hard to do analytically. However, if you are given a certain test statistic, one can just sum up the weighted p-values. Thus, if you have, say 1/4 chisquare0, 1/2 chisquare1 and 1/4 chisquare3, one just takes the p-value to be 1/4*0 + 1/2(p-value from chisquare 1) + 1/4(p-value from chisquare 3). That makes life very simple! The person who pointed this out to me is Dale Nyholt. It might be worth mentioning. Also, Dale has a nice editorial in Am J Hum Genetics on assessing significance from linkage tests of sib pairs (and DZ twins) that is worth referencing. Nyholt, D: (2000). All LODs are not created equal. Am J Hum Genet, 67:282-288.