Like the F distribution and unlike t and z,
the chi square distribution is not symmetric and takes only non-negative
values. Its common uses are one-sided in the upper tail: a test of
association in a contingency table, a likelihood ratio test, and a test
of model fit all reject for large values, because a poorly fitting model
produces a large discrepancy, never a small one. That is why
alternative defaults to "greater" here whereas it defaults
to "not_equal" in cv_t. Maxwell, Delaney, and Kelley
(2027) tabulate these upper-tail values in their Appendix Table A.9.
Both tails remain available for the situations that need them, most
commonly an interval for a variance, which uses an upper and a lower chi
square quantile. Set alternative = "not_equal", or give
alpha_lower and alpha_upper directly. When a tail is given
zero area its critical value is the boundary of the support, so
lower_cv is 0 under the default.
A noncentral parameter can be supplied, which is what a power analysis
for a test of model fit needs, though it would not be used for a standard
null hypothesis significance test. See ci_nc_chisq
for confidence limits on the noncentral parameter itself.