A Test to Identify the Uniform Distribution, with Applications to Probability Plotting and Other Distributions

A test and its empirical distribution (n > 4) has been developed to examine whether a set of sample results arise from a population which possesses a uniform distribution. The test statistic is easy to calculate and lends itself nicely to probability-plot analyses. The test statistic applies the concept of the Shapiro-Wilk W-test to the uniform distribution. The result allows one to examine distributional assumptions regarding any continuous distribution and thus provides practitioners, currently using traditional Chi-Square techniques, with a less subjective testing procedure.