Monthly Archives: July 2016

3 YEARS AGO (JULY 2013): MEMORY LANE

Posted on July 30, 2016 by Mayo
3 years ago...

3 years ago…

MONTHLY MEMORY LANE: 3 years ago: July 2013. I mark in red three posts that seem most apt for general background on key issues in this blog, excluding those reblogged recently [1], and in green up to 3 others I’d recommend[2].  Posts that are part of a “unit” or a group of “U-Phils”(you [readers] philosophize) count as one.

July 2013

  • (7/3) Phil/Stat/Law: 50 Shades of gray between error and fraud
  • (7/6) Bad news bears: ‘Bayesian bear’ rejoinder–reblog mashup
  • (7/10) PhilStatLaw: Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence (3d ed) on Statistical Significance (Schachtman)
  • (7/11) Is Particle Physics Bad Science? (memory lane)
  • (7/13) Professor of Philosophy Resigns over Sexual Misconduct (rejected post)
  • (7/14) Stephen Senn: Indefinite irrelevance
  • (7/17) Phil/Stat/Law: What Bayesian prior should a jury have? (Schachtman)
  • (7/19) Msc Kvetch: A question on the Martin-Zimmerman case we do not hear
  • (7/20) Guest Post: Larry Laudan. Why Presuming Innocence is Not a Bayesian Prior
  • (7/23) Background Knowledge: Not to Quantify, But To Avoid Being Misled By, Subjective Beliefs
  • (7/26) New Version: On the Birnbaum argument for the SLP: Slides for JSM talk

[1] Monthly memory lanes began at the blog’s 3-year anniversary in Sept, 2014.

[2] New Rule, July 30, 2016.

 

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Categories: 3-year memory lane, Error Statistics, Statistics | Leave a comment

For Popper’s Birthday: A little Popper self-test & reading from Conjectures and Refutations

Posted on July 28, 2016 by Mayo
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28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994

Today is Karl Popper’s birthday. I’m linking to a reading from his Conjectures and Refutations[i] along with an undergraduate item I came across: Popper Self-Test Questions. It includes multiple choice questions, quotes to ponder, and thumbnail definitions at the end[ii].

Blog Readers who wish to send me their answers will have their papers graded (at least try the multiple choice; if you’re unsure, do the reading). [Use the comments or e-mail.]

[i] Popper reading from Conjectures and Refutations
[ii] I might note the “No-Pain philosophy” (3 part) Popper posts from this blog: parts 1, 2, and 3.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY POPPER!

REFERENCE:

Popper, K. (1962). Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Basic Books.

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Categories: Popper | 11 Comments

“Nonsignificance Plus High Power Does Not Imply Support for the Null Over the Alternative.”

Posted on July 21, 2016 by Mayo
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Seeing the world through overly rosy glasses

Taboos about power nearly always stem from misuse of power analysis. Sander Greenland (2012) has a paper called “Nonsignificance Plus High Power Does Not Imply Support for the Null Over the Alternative.”  I’m not saying Greenland errs; the error would be made by anyone who interprets power analysis in a manner giving rise to Greenland’s objection. So what’s (ordinary) power analysis?

(I) Listen to Jacob Cohen (1988) introduce Power Analysis

“PROVING THE NULL HYPOTHESIS. Research reports in the literature are frequently flawed by conclusions that state or imply that the null hypothesis is true. For example, following the finding that the difference between two sample means is not statistically significant, instead of properly concluding from this failure to reject the null hypothesis that the data do not warrant the conclusion that the population means differ, the writer concludes, at least implicitly, that there is no difference. The latter conclusion is always strictly invalid, and is functionally invalid as well unless power is high. The high frequency of occurrence of this invalid interpretation can be laid squarely at the doorstep of the general neglect of attention to statistical power in the training of behavioral scientists. Continue reading →

Categories: Cohen, Greenland, power, Statistics | 46 Comments

Philosophy and History of Science Announcements

Posted on July 11, 2016 by Mayo
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2016 UK-EU Foundations of Physics Conference

Start Date:16 July 2016

Categories: Announcement | Leave a comment

3 YEARS AGO (JUNE 2013): MEMORY LANE

Posted on July 6, 2016 by Mayo
3 years ago...

3 years ago…

MONTHLY MEMORY LANE: 3 years ago: June 2013. I mark in red three posts that seem most apt for general background on key issues in this blog, excluding those reblogged recently [1].  Posts that are part of a “unit” or a group of “U-Phils”(you [readers] philosophize) count as one. Here I grouped 6/5 and 6/6.

June 2013

  • (6/1) Winner of May Palindrome Contest
  • (6/1) Some statistical dirty laundry*(recently reblogged)
  • (6/5) Do CIs Avoid Fallacies of Tests? Reforming the Reformers :(6/5 and6/6 are paired as one)
  • (6/6) PhilStock: Topsy-Turvy Game
  • (6/6) Anything Tests Can do, CIs do Better; CIs Do Anything Better than Tests?* (reforming the reformers cont.)
  • (6/8) Richard Gill: “Integrity or fraud… or just questionable research practices?”*(recently reblogged)
  • (6/11) Mayo: comment on the repressed memory research [How a conceptual criticism, requiring no statistics, might go.]
  • (6/14) P-values can’t be trusted except when used to argue that p-values can’t be trusted!
  • (6/19) PhilStock: The Great Taper Caper
  • (6/19) Stanley Young: better p-values through randomization in microarrays
  • (6/22) What do these share in common: m&ms, limbo stick, ovulation, Dale Carnegie? Sat night potpourri*(recently reblogged)
  • (6/26) Why I am not a “dualist” in the sense of Sander Greenland
  • (6/29) Palindrome “contest” contest
  • (6/30) Blog Contents: mid-year

[1] Monthly memory lanes began at the blog’s 3-year anniversary in Sept, 2014.

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A. Birnbaum: Statistical Methods in Scientific Inference (May 27, 1923 – July 1, 1976)

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Mayo

Allan Birnbaum: May 27, 1923- July 1, 1976

Allan Birnbaum died 40 years ago today. He lived to be only 53 [i]. From the perspective of philosophy of statistics and philosophy of science, Birnbaum is best known for his work on likelihood, the Likelihood Principle [ii], and for his attempts to blend concepts of likelihood with error probability ideas to arrive at what he termed “concepts of statistical evidence”. Failing to find adequate concepts of statistical evidence, Birnbaum called for joining the work of “interested statisticians, scientific workers and philosophers and historians of science”–an idea I have heartily endorsed. While known for a result that the (strong) Likelihood Principle followed from sufficiency and conditionality principles (a result that Jimmy Savage deemed one of the greatest breakthroughs in statistics), a few years after publishing it, he turned away from it, perhaps discovering gaps in his argument. A post linking to a 2014 Statistical Science issue discussing Birnbaum’s result is here. Reference [5] links to the Synthese 1977 volume dedicated to his memory. The editors describe it as their way of “paying homage to Professor Birnbaum’s penetrating and stimulating work on the foundations of statistics”. Ample weekend reading! Continue reading →

Categories: Birnbaum, Likelihood Principle, phil/history of stat, Statistics | Tags: | 62 Comments

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