A test of a specified circular distribution, adapted from the Crame´r–von Mises test, and introduced by Geoffrey Watson in 1961. Denote the n observations by θ1, θ2,..., θn and write

where F(
θ) is the
probability of a value in the interval (0,
θ) according to the
null hypothesis. The test statistic is
U2, given by

A large value of
U2 leads to rejection of the null hypothesis. A transformed version of
U2 is provided by
U*, given by

The distribution of
U* is approximately independent of
n. The upper 10%, 5%, 2.5%, and 1% points of
U* are 0.152, 0.187, 0.222, and 0.268, respectively.