SNEAK PREVIEW: Here’s the cover of Statistical Inference as Severe Testing: How to Get Beyond the Statistics Wars:
It should be out in July 2018. The “Itinerary”, generally known as the Table of Contents, is below. I forgot to mention that this is not the actual pagination, I don’t have the page proofs yet. These are the pages of the draft I submitted. It should be around 50 pages shorter in the actual page proofs, maybe 380 pages.
Itinerary
|
Excursion 1: How to Tell What’s True about Statistical Inference |
1 | |
| Tour I: Beyond Probabilism and Performance | 1 | |
| 1.1 Severity Requirement: Bad Evidence, No Test (BENT) | 3 | |
| 1.2 Probabilism, Performance and Probativeness | 11 | |
| 1.3 The Current State of Play in Statistical Foundations: A view from a hot air balloon | 22 | |
| Tour II: Error Probing Tools vs. Logics of Evidence | 29 | |
| 1.4 The Law of Likelihood and the Likelihood Principle | 29 | |
| 1.5 Trying and Trying Again: The Likelihood Principle | 41 | |
| Excursion 2: Taboos of Induction and Falsification | 56 | |
| Tour I: Induction and Confirmation | 56 | |
| 2.1 The Traditional Problem of Induction | 56 | |
| 2.2 Is Probability a Good Measure of Confirmation? | 63 | |
| Tour II: Falsification, Pseudoscience, Induction | 72 | |
| 2.3 Popper, Severity and Methodological Probability | 72 | |
| 2.4 Novelty and Severity | 87 | |
| 2.5 Fallacies of Rejection and an Animal Called NHST | 90 | |
| 2.6 The Reproducibility Revolution (Crisis) in Psychology | 94 | |
| 2.7 How to Solve the Problem of Induction Now | 105 | |
| Excursion 3: Statistical Tests and Scientific Inference | 113 | |
| Tour I: Ingenious and Severe Tests | 113 | |
| 3.1 Statistical Inference and Sexy Science: The 1919 Eclipse Test | 115 | |
| 3.2. N-P Tests: an Episode in Anglo-Polish Collaboration | 125 | |
| 3.3 How to Do All N-P Tests Do (and more) While a Member of the Fisherian Tribe | 139 | |
| Tour II: It’s The Methods, Stupid | 156 | |
| 3.4 Some Howlers and Chestnuts of Statistical Tests | 157 | |
| 3.5 P-Values Aren’t Error Probabilities Because Fisher Rejected Neyman’s Performance Philosophy | 166 | |
| 3.6 Hocus-pocus: P-values Are Not Error Probabilities, Are Not Even Frequentist! | 175 | |
| Tour III: Capability and Severity: Deeper Concepts | 181 | |
| 3.7 Severity, Capability and Confidence Intervals (CIs) | 181 | |
| 3.8 The Probability our Results are Statistical Fluctuations: Higg’s Discovery | 194 | |
| Excursion 4: Objectivity and Auditing | 211 | |
| Tour I: The Myth of “The Myth of Objectivity” | 211 | |
| 4.1 Dirty hands: Statistical Inference is Sullied with Discretionary Choices | 212 | |
| 4.2 Embrace Your Subjectivity | 218 | |
| Tour II: Rejection Fallacies: Who’s Exaggerating What? | 230 | |
| 4.3 Significant Results with Overly Sensitive Tests: Large n problem | 231 | |
| 4.4 Do P-Values Exaggerate the Evidence? | 237 | |
| 4.5 Who’s Exaggerating? How to Evaluate Reforms Based on Bayes Factor Standards | 251 | |
| Tour III: Auditing: Biasing Selection Effects & Randomization | 258 | |
| 4.6 Error Control is Necessary for Severity Control | 260 | |
| 4.7 Randomization | 278 | |
| Tour IV: More Auditing: Objectivity and Model Checking | 288 | |
| 4.8 All Models are False | 288 | |
| 4.9 For Model Checking, They Come Back to Significance Tests | 293 | |
| 4.10 Bootstrap Resampling: My sample is a mirror of the universe | 298 | |
| 4.11 Misspecification (M-S) Testing in the Error Statistical Account | 300 | |
| Excursion 5: Power and Severity | 313 | |
| Tour I: Power: Pre-data and Post-data | 313 | |
| 5.1 Power Howlers, Trade-offs and Benchmarks | 315 | |
| 5.2 Cruise Severity Drill: How Tail Areas (appear to) Exaggerate the Evidence | 322 | |
| 5.3 Insignificant Results: Power Analysis and Severity | 328 | |
| 5.4 Severity Interpretation of Tests: Severity Curves | 336 | |
| Tour II: How Not to Corrupt Power | 342 | |
| 5.5 Power Taboos, Retrospective Power, and Shpower | 342 | |
| 5.6 Positive Predictive Value: Fine for Luggage | 351 | |
| Tour III: Deconstructing the N-P vs. Fisher Debates | 361 | |
| 5.7 Statistical Theatre: “Les Miserables Citations” | 361 | |
| 5.8 Neyman’s Performance and Fisher’s Fiducial Probability | 372 | |
| Excursion 6: (Probabilist) Foundations Lost, (Probative) Foundations Found | 384 | |
| Tour I: What Ever Happened to Bayesian Foundations? | 384 | |
| 6.1 Bayesian Ways: From Classical to Default | 386 | |
| 6.2 What are Bayesian Priors? A Gallimaufry | 391 | |
| 6.3 Unification or Schizophrenia: Bayesian Family Feuds | 399 | |
| 6.4 Is Bayes’ Rule Irrational? | 406 | |
| 6.5 Can You Change Your Bayesian Prior? | 408 | |
| Tour II: Pragmatic and Error Statistical Bayesians | 415 | |
| 6.6 Pragmatic Bayesians | 415 | |
| 6.7 Error Statistical Bayesians: Falsificationist Bayesians | 423 | |
| Souvenir (Z) Farewell | 428 | |
Error Statistics Philosophy 
hadn’t been planning a cover like this, there was to be a picture, but when an idea of a wallpaper of words was included in samples from Cambridge University Press, I wondered if it could work as a way to convey the contents to readers. I wanted the red title to go right over the background words, but CUP thought this would be easier to read. I was prepared to forgo a picture in order to communicate the kinds of topics considered.
Aside from conveying the contents, there are some possible metaphors. Here’s one: Once the concepts and problems in the background are seen through the perspective of one who holds a view of statistical inference as severe testing, they are seen in a different way.
Share your impressions/metaphors.
Good. There’s a chance that in the title of Excursion 4, Tour 2, you want “who’s” (as in 4.5) but maybe you don’t
Mike: Yes, thank you. I’d be glad for other corrections.
Exciting news! Cover clever too. Can hardly wait to buy my copy of this new book.
James: Very kind of you, I feel it’s a bit strange, but I was asked for a cover idea way earlier than I expected and somehow this took shape (it was initially Diana Gillooly’s idea–from CUP)
By the way, this hasn’t been proofed yet, so please send typos. I already found a few. I’m working on all that now.
Looking forward to reading the book! The cover is perfect as it is! I don’t have any metaphor of my own, really, although I cannot help but going back to Taleb’s (borrowed from Popper?) black swan metaphor and perceiving error statistics as a tool which could help tame that bird (among other things). Haven’t found typos in the table of contents (unless switching title to lower cases, and ‘shpower’, were not intentional, of course.)
Good to see this… I’m particularly curious about Excursion 4 of course!
Amazing! Thank you for all your brilliance, but more importantly – that you’ve shared it with us.
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