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Infrequent doesn’t disprove
There is no logical warrant for considering an event known to occur in a given hypothesis, even if infrequently, as disproving the hypothesis. Joseph Berkson in “Tests of significance considered as evidence”. Journal of the American Statistical Association 37: 325-335.
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Sense-checking data
Over the birdsite dumpster fire. Emily Harvey was asking: do you know of any good guidelines/advice for what one should do to sense check and make sure they understand any data before using it? I replied the following: Typically, I might be very familiar with the type of data and its variables (if it is…
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Not a contribution to science
Null hypotheses of no difference are usually known to be false before the data are collected … when they are, their rejection or acceptance simply reflects the size of the sample and the power of the test, and is not a contribution to science Savage 1957 cited by Nelder 1999 “From Statistics to Statistical Science”.…
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The data may not contain the answer
The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data. John W Tukey in Sunset Salvo. 1986. The American Statistician 40(1): 72-76.
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Flotsam 15: inference
Before I lose the link—as I’m deleting toots & tweets two weeks after I post the—I should save the address for “Introduction to Modern Causal Inference” by Alejandro Schuler and Mark van der Laan. It is a book draft that looks quite readable. Also love Xanthe Tynehorne, Esq.’s Compendium of Curious Words. Weird enough to…