What is the right usage in Fisher test in R

Question

So I have data in form (in real data I have more rows, of course so this is just a sample)

>df <- structure(list(cake.eated = c(1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1), is.it.weekend = c(1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0)), 
+ .Names = c("is.cake.eated","is.it.weekend"), row.names = c(NA, -6L), class = "data.frame")
>df

 is.cake.eated is.it.weekend
         1             1
         0             1
         0             1
         1             0
         1             1
         1             0

and I woulf like to perfotm Fisher's test to it. In contigency-table form my data looks like

>c = matrix(c(2205,2605,1442,1042), ncol=2)
>rownames(c) <- c("cake.eated", "cake.not.eated")
>colnames(c) <- c("not.weekend", "weekend")
>c

                  not.weekend  weekend
 cake.eated            2205    1442
 cake.not.eated        2605    1042

So my question is, which one of these is the right way to use Fisher's test in R;

> fisher.test(c)

      Fisher's Exact Test for Count Data

data:  c
p-value < 2.2e-16
alternative hypothesis: true odds ratio is not equal to 1
95 percent confidence interval:
0.5539554 0.6753183
sample estimates:
odds ratio 
0.6117068 

OR

>fisher.test(df$is.cake.eated, df$is.it.weekend)
      Fisher's Exact Test for Count Data

data:  df$is.cake.eated and df$is.it.weekend
p-value = 1
alternative hypothesis: true odds ratio is not equal to 1
95 percent confidence interval:
0.8607512 1.1611740
sample estimates:
odds ratio 
     1 

Is Fisher test even okay to use in this case an this kind of data or is some else like chi-squared better? Why are the results from fisher tests so different and what am I doing wrong?

> chisq.test(df$is.cake.eated, df$is.it.weekend)

    Pearson's Chi-squared test with Yates' continuity correction

data:  df$is.cake.eated and df$is.it.weekend
X-squared = 1.781e-06, df = 1, p-value = 0.9989

Also, by Barnard test my results look like

> barnard.test(2205, 1442, 2605, 1042, dp=0.01)

       Barnard's Unconditional Test

       Treatment I Treatment II
Outcome I         2205         1442
Outcome II        2605         1042

Null hypothesis: Treatments have no effect on the outcomes
Score statistic = 9.88313
Nuisance parameter = 0.03 (One sided), 0.97 (Two sided)
P-value = 7.65658e-22 (One sided), 7.65658e-22 (Two sided)

Answer 1

fisher.test

With fisher.test you can run it either on a table, as in your example fisher.test(c) or you can run it on two vectors, as in your second example. It looks like the output you have provided from fisher.test(df$is.cake.eated, df$is.it.weekend) does not match the input. They should correspond if the correct data are used:

df <- structure(list(cake.eated = c(1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1), is.it.weekend = c(1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0)),
                .Names = c("is.cake.eated","is.it.weekend"), row.names = c(NA, -6L), class = "data.frame")


fisher.test(df$is.cake.eated, df$is.it.weekend)

Gives

    Fisher's Exact Test for Count Data

data:  table(df)
p-value = 0.4667
alternative hypothesis: true odds ratio is not equal to 1
95 percent confidence interval:
  0.00000 11.81149
sample estimates:
odds ratio 
         0

And fisher.test(table(df)) gives

    Fisher's Exact Test for Count Data

data:  table(df)
p-value = 0.4667
alternative hypothesis: true odds ratio is not equal to 1
95 percent confidence interval:
  0.00000 11.81149
sample estimates:
odds ratio 
         0 

Chi-squared test

The chi-squared test and Fisher's exact test are used to do similar things: test the association between two categorical variable. However, they go about it in different ways. You can find details in standard statistics text books, but basically the chi-squared test approximates the p value (it is said to be 'asymptotic') whereas the exact test gives an exact p value. For this reason I tend to always use Fisher's exact but you could use chi-squared here.

The rule of thumb about using chi-squared is that no cell in the table should have an expected cell count of less than 1, and no more than 20% of the cells should have an expected count of less than 5. You can access the expected cell counts in R:

chisq.test(c)$exp

In your example, this is satisfied and the chi-squared approximation is valid:

chisq.test(c)$exp
               not.weekend weekend
cake.eated            2405    1242
cake.not.eated        2405    1242

chisq.test(c)

    Pearson's Chi-squared test with Yates' continuity correction

data:  c
X-squared = 97.189, df = 1, p-value < 2.2e-16