Next Phil Stat Forum: January 7: D. Mayo: Putting the Brakes on the Breakthrough (or “How I used simple logic to uncover a flaw in …..statistical foundations”)

The fourth meeting of our New Phil Stat Forum*:

The Statistics Wars
and Their Casualties

January 7, 16:00 – 17:30  (London time)
11 am-12:30 pm (New York, ET)**
**note time modification and date change

Putting the Brakes on the Breakthrough,

or “How I used simple logic to uncover a flaw in a controversial 60-year old ‘theorem’ in statistical foundations” 

Deborah G. Mayo

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HOW TO JOIN US: SEE THIS LINK

ABSTRACT: An essential component of inference based on familiar frequentist (error statistical) notions p-values, statistical significance and confidence levels, is the relevant sampling distribution (hence the term sampling theory). This results in violations of a principle known as the strong likelihood principle (SLP), or just the likelihood principle (LP), which says, in effect, that outcomes other than those observed are irrelevant for inferences within a statistical model. Now Allan Birnbaum was a frequentist (error statistician), but he found himself in a predicament: He seemed to have shown that the LP follows from uncontroversial frequentist principles! Bayesians, such as Savage, heralded his result as a “breakthrough in statistics”! But there’s a flaw in the “proof”, and that’s what I aim to show in my presentation by means of 3 simple examples:

• Example 1: Trying and Trying Again
• Example 2: Two instruments with different precisions
  (you shouldn’t get credit/blame for something you didn’t do)
• The Breakthrough: Don’t Birnbaumize that data my friend

As in the last 9 years, I will post an imaginary dialogue with Allan Birnbaum at the stroke of midnight, New Year’s Eve, and this will be relevant for the talk.

The Phil Stat Forum schedule is at the Phil-Stat-Wars.com blog