17 Feb 1890-29 July 1962
Today is R.A. Fisher’s birthday! I am reblogging what I call the “Triad”–an exchange between Fisher, Neyman and Pearson (N-P) published 20 years after the Fisher-Neyman break-up. My seminar on PhilStat is studying these this week, so it’s timely. While my favorite is still the reply by E.S. Pearson, which alone should have shattered Fisher’s allegations that N-P “reinterpret” tests of significance as “some kind of acceptance procedure”, all three are chock full of gems for different reasons. They are short and worth rereading. Neyman’s article pulls back the cover on what is really behind Fisher’s over-the-top polemics, what with Russian 5-year plans and commercialism in the U.S. Not only is Fisher jealous that N-P tests came to overshadow “his” tests, he is furious at Neyman for driving home the fact that Fisher’s fiducial approach had been shown to be inconsistent (by others). The flaw is illustrated by Neyman in his portion of the triad. I discuss this briefly in my Philosophy of Science Association paper from a few months ago (slides are here*).Further details may be found in my book, SIST (2018) especially pp 388-392 linked to here. It speaks to a common fallacy seen every day in interpreting confidence intervals. As for Neyman’s “behaviorism”, Pearson’s last sentence is revealing.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY R.A. FISHER! Continue reading
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