One factor that affects whether I purchase a stock or not is how much dividends it gave out last year, and for how many years it has been doing so. This is because when I purchase stocks, I am hoping mainly to benefit from dividend gains rather than capital gains. One obvious question would be: how much can we rely on the dividends that was paid out in the past to predict future dividends? One might suggest going into the fundamentals of the company and estimate how likely the company can continue doing so. I personally find it to be a complex and qualitative task, therefore, the statistician in me decided to answer a simpler question with an easy-to-compute solution: Historically, what is the percentage where the absolute amount of dividends paid out by a particular company (listed in SGX) this year is greater or equal to the previous year's? ......