Statistics

Neyman vs the ‘Inferential’ Probabilists continued (a)

Posted on April 16, 2018 by Mayo

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Today is Jerzy Neyman’s Birthday (April 16, 1894 – August 5, 1981).  I am posting a brief excerpt and a link to a paper of his that I hadn’t posted before: Neyman, J. (1962), ‘Two Breakthroughs in the Theory of Statistical Decision Making‘ [i] It’s chock full of ideas and arguments, but the one that interests me at the moment is Neyman’s conception of “his breakthrough”, in relation to a certain concept of “inference”.  “In the present paper” he tells us, “the term ‘inferential theory’…will be used to describe the attempts to solve the Bayes’ problem with a reference to confidence, beliefs, etc., through some supplementation …either a substitute a priori distribution [exemplified by the so called principle of insufficient reason] or a new measure of uncertainty” such as Fisher’s fiducial probability. Now Neyman always distinguishes his error statistical performance conception from Bayesian and Fiducial probabilisms [ii]. The surprising twist here is semantical and the culprit is none other than…Allan Birnbaum. Yet Birnbaum gets short shrift, and no mention is made of our favorite “breakthrough” (or did I miss it?). [iii] I’ll explain in later stages of this post & in comments…(so please check back); I don’t want to miss the start of the birthday party in honor of Neyman, and it’s already 8:30 p.m in Berkeley!

Note: In this article,”attacks” on various statistical “fronts” refers to ways of attacking problems in one or another statistical research program. HAPPY BIRTHDAY NEYMAN!

 

 

Installment (a)4/17. What doesn’t Neyman like about Birnbaum’s advocacy of a Principle of Sufficiency S (p. 25)? He doesn’t like that it is advanced as a normative principle (e.g., about when evidence is or ought to be deemed equivalent) rather than a criterion that does something for you, such as control errors. (Presumably it is relevant to a type of context, say parametric inference within a model.) S is put forward as a kind of principle of rationality, rather than one with a rationale in solving some statistical problem

“The principle of sufficiency (S): If E is specified experiment, with outcomes x; if t = t (x) is any sufficient statistic; and if E’ is the experiment, derived from E, in which any outcome x of E is represented only by the corresponding value t = t (x) of the sufficient statistic; then for each x, Ev (E, x) = Ev (E’, t) where t = t (x)… (S) may be described informally as asserting the ‘irrelevance of observations independent of a sufficient statistic’.”

Ev(E, x) is a metalogical symbol referring to the evidence from experiment E with result x. The very idea that there is such a thing as an evidence function is never explained, but to Birnbaum “inferential theory” required such things. (At least that’s how he started out.) The view is very philosophical and it inherits much from logical positivism and logics of induction.The principle S, and also other principles of Birnbaum, have a normative character: Birnbaum considers them “compellingly appropriate”.

“The principles of Birnbaum appear as a kind of substitutes for known theorems” Neyman says. For example, various authors proved theorems to the general effect that the use of sufficient statistics will minimize the frequency of errors. But if you just start with the rationale (minimizing the frequency of errors, say) you wouldn’t need these”principles” from on high as it were. That’s what Neyman seems to be saying in his criticism of them in this paper. Do you agree? He has the same gripe concerning Cornfield’s conception of a default-type Bayesian account akin to Jeffreys. Why?

[i] I thank @omaclaran for reminding me of this paper on twitter recently.

[ii] Or so I argue in my forthcoming, Statistical Inference as Severe Testing: How to Get Beyond the Statistics Wars, 2018, CUP. (Expected this summer.)

[iii] Do you think Neyman is using “breakthrough” here in reference to Savage’s description of Birnbaum’s “proof” of the (strong) Likelihood Principle? Or is it the other way round? Or neither? Please weigh in.

REFERENCES

Neyman, J. (1962), ‘Two Breakthroughs in the Theory of Statistical Decision Making‘, Revue De l’Institut International De Statistique / Review of the International Statistical Institute, 30(1), 11-27.

Categories: Bayesian/frequentist, Error Statistics, Neyman, Statistics | Leave a comment

Deconstructing the Fisher-Neyman conflict wearing fiducial glasses (continued)

Posted on February 24, 2018 by Mayo
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Fisher/ Neyman

This continues my previous post: “Can’t take the fiducial out of Fisher…” in recognition of Fisher’s birthday, February 17. I supply a few more intriguing articles you may find enlightening to read and/or reread on a Saturday night

Move up 20 years to the famous 1955/56 exchange between Fisher and Neyman. Fisher clearly connects Neyman’s adoption of a behavioristic-performance formulation to his denying the soundness of fiducial inference. When “Neyman denies the existence of inductive reasoning, he is merely expressing a verbal preference. For him ‘reasoning’ means what ‘deductive reasoning’ means to others.” (Fisher 1955, p. 74). Continue reading →

Categories: fiducial probability, Fisher, Neyman, Statistics | 4 Comments

Can’t Take the Fiducial Out of Fisher (if you want to understand the N-P performance philosophy) [i]

Posted on February 23, 2018 by Mayo
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R.A. Fisher: February 17, 1890 – July 29, 1962

Continuing with posts in recognition of R.A. Fisher’s birthday, I post one from a couple of years ago on a topic that had previously not been discussed on this blog: Fisher’s fiducial probability. 

[Neyman and Pearson] “began an influential collaboration initially designed primarily, it would seem to clarify Fisher’s writing. This led to their theory of testing hypotheses and to Neyman’s development of confidence intervals, aiming to clarify Fisher’s idea of fiducial intervals (D.R.Cox, 2006, p. 195).

The entire episode of fiducial probability is fraught with minefields. Many say it was Fisher’s biggest blunder; others suggest it still hasn’t been understood. The majority of discussions omit the side trip to the Fiducial Forest altogether, finding the surrounding brambles too thorny to penetrate. Besides, a fascinating narrative about the Fisher-Neyman-Pearson divide has managed to bloom and grow while steering clear of fiducial probability–never mind that it remained a centerpiece of Fisher’s statistical philosophy. I now think that this is a mistake. It was thought, following Lehman (1993) and others, that we could take the fiducial out of Fisher and still understand the core of the Neyman-Pearson vs Fisher (or Neyman vs Fisher) disagreements. We can’t. Quite aside from the intrinsic interest in correcting the “he said/he said” of these statisticians, the issue is intimately bound up with the current (flawed) consensus view of frequentist error statistics.

So what’s fiducial inference? I follow Cox (2006), adapting for the case of the lower limit: Continue reading →

Categories: fiducial probability, Fisher, Statistics | Leave a comment

R. A. Fisher: How an Outsider Revolutionized Statistics (Aris Spanos)

Posted on February 19, 2018 by Mayo
A SPANOS

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In recognition of R.A. Fisher’s birthday on February 17….

‘R. A. Fisher: How an Outsider Revolutionized Statistics’

by Aris Spanos

Few statisticians will dispute that R. A. Fisher (February 17, 1890 – July 29, 1962) is the father of modern statistics; see Savage (1976), Rao (1992). Inspired by William Gosset’s (1908) paper on the Student’s t finite sampling distribution, he recast statistics into the modern model-based induction in a series of papers in the early 1920s. He put forward a theory of optimal estimation based on the method of maximum likelihood that has changed only marginally over the last century. His significance testing, spearheaded by the p-value, provided the basis for the Neyman-Pearson theory of optimal testing in the early 1930s. According to Hald (1998)

“Fisher was a genius who almost single-handedly created the foundations for modern statistical science, without detailed study of his predecessors. When young he was ignorant not only of the Continental contributions but even of contemporary publications in English.” (p. 738)

What is not so well known is that Fisher was the ultimate outsider when he brought about this change of paradigms in statistical science. As an undergraduate, he studied mathematics at Cambridge, and then did graduate work in statistical mechanics and quantum theory. His meager knowledge of statistics came from his study of astronomy; see Box (1978). That, however did not stop him from publishing his first paper in statistics in 1912 (still an undergraduate) on “curve fitting”, questioning Karl Pearson’s method of moments and proposing a new method that was eventually to become the likelihood method in his 1921 paper. Continue reading →

Categories: Fisher, phil/history of stat, Spanos, Statistics | 3 Comments

Guest Blog: STEPHEN SENN: ‘Fisher’s alternative to the alternative’

Posted on February 18, 2018 by Mayo
“You May Believe You Are a Bayesian But You Are Probably Wrong”

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As part of the week of recognizing R.A.Fisher (February 17, 1890 – July 29, 1962), I reblog a guest post by Stephen Senn from 2012/2017.  The comments from 2017 lead to a troubling issue that I will bring up in the comments today.

‘Fisher’s alternative to the alternative’

By: Stephen Senn

[2012 marked] the 50th anniversary of RA Fisher’s death. It is a good excuse, I think, to draw attention to an aspect of his philosophy of significance testing. In his extremely interesting essay on Fisher, Jimmie Savage drew attention to a problem in Fisher’s approach to testing. In describing Fisher’s aversion to power functions Savage writes, ‘Fisher says that some tests are more sensitive than others, and I cannot help suspecting that that comes to very much the same thing as thinking about the power function.’ (Savage 1976) (P473).

The modern statistician, however, has an advantage here denied to Savage. Savage’s essay was published posthumously in 1976 and the lecture on which it was based was given in Detroit on 29 December 1971 (P441). At that time Fisher’s scientific correspondence did not form part of his available oeuvre but in 1990 Henry Bennett’s magnificent edition of Fisher’s statistical correspondence (Bennett 1990) was published and this throws light on many aspects of Fisher’s thought including on significance tests. Continue reading →

Categories: Fisher, S. Senn, Statistics | 1 Comment

Happy Birthday R.A. Fisher: ‘Two New Properties of Mathematical Likelihood’

Posted on February 17, 2018 by Mayo

17 February 1890–29 July 1962

Today is R.A. Fisher’s birthday. I’ll post some Fisherian items this week in honor of it. This paper comes just before the conflicts with Neyman and Pearson erupted.  Fisher links his tests and sufficiency, to the Neyman and Pearson lemma in terms of power.  It’s as if we may see them as ending up in a similar place while starting from different origins. I quote just the most relevant portions…the full article is linked below. Happy Birthday Fisher!

“Two New Properties of Mathematical Likelihood“

by R.A. Fisher, F.R.S.

Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series A, 144: 285-307 (1934)

  The property that where a sufficient statistic exists, the likelihood, apart from a factor independent of the parameter to be estimated, is a function only of the parameter and the sufficient statistic, explains the principle result obtained by Neyman and Pearson in discussing the efficacy of tests of significance.  Neyman and Pearson introduce the notion that any chosen test of a hypothesis H0 is more powerful than any other equivalent test, with regard to an alternative hypothesis H1, when it rejects H0 in a set of samples having an assigned aggregate frequency ε when H0 is true, and the greatest possible aggregate frequency when H1 is true. If any group of samples can be found within the region of rejection whose probability of occurrence on the hypothesis H1 is less than that of any other group of samples outside the region, but is not less on the hypothesis H0, then the test can evidently be made more powerful by substituting the one group for the other. Continue reading →

Categories: Fisher, phil/history of stat, Statistics | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

S. Senn: Being a statistician means never having to say you are certain (Guest Post)

Posted on January 13, 2018 by Mayo

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Stephen Senn
Head of  Competence Center
for Methodology and Statistics (CCMS)
Luxembourg Institute of Health
Twitter @stephensenn

Being a statistician means never having to say you are certain

A recent discussion of randomised controlled trials[1] by Angus Deaton and Nancy Cartwright (D&C) contains much interesting analysis but also, in my opinion, does not escape rehashing some of the invalid criticisms of randomisation with which the literatures seems to be littered. The paper has two major sections. The latter, which deals with generalisation of results, or what is sometime called external validity, I like much more than the former which deals with internal validity. It is the former I propose to discuss.

Continue reading →

Categories: Error Statistics, RCTs, Statistics | 26 Comments

60 yrs of Cox’s (1958) weighing machine, & links to binge-read the Likelihood Principle

Posted on December 27, 2017 by Mayo
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2018 will mark 60 years since the famous chestnut from Sir David Cox (1958). The example  “is now usually called the ‘weighing machine example,’ which draws attention to the need for conditioning, at least in certain types of problems” (Reid 1992, p. 582). When I describe it, you’ll find it hard to believe many regard it as causing an earthquake in statistical foundations, unless you’re already steeped in these matters. A simple version: If half the time I reported my weight from a scale that’s always right, and half the time use a scale that gets it right with probability .5, would you say I’m right with probability ¾? Well, maybe. But suppose you knew that this measurement was made with the scale that’s right with probability .5? The overall error probability is scarcely relevant for giving the warrant of the particular measurement, knowing which scale was used. So what’s the earthquake? First a bit more on the chestnut. Here’s an excerpt from Cox and Mayo (2010, 295-8): Continue reading →

Categories: Sir David Cox, Statistics, strong likelihood principle | 4 Comments

The Conversion of Subjective Bayesian, Colin Howson, & the problem of old evidence (i)

Posted on November 27, 2017 by Mayo

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“The subjective Bayesian theory as developed, for example, by Savage … cannot solve the deceptively simple but actually intractable old evidence problem, whence as a foundation for a logic of confirmation at any rate, it must be accounted a failure.” (Howson, (2017), p. 674)

What? Did the “old evidence” problem cause Colin Howson to recently abdicate his decades long position as a leading subjective Bayesian? It seems to have. I was so surprised to come across this in a recent perusal of Philosophy of Science that I wrote to him to check if it is really true. (It is.) I thought perhaps it was a different Colin Howson, or the son of the one who co-wrote 3 editions of Howson and Urbach: Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach espousing hard-line subjectivism since 1989.[1] I am not sure which of the several paradigms of non-subjective or default Bayesianism Howson endorses (he’d argued for years, convincingly, against any one of them), nor how he handles various criticisms (Kass and Wasserman 1996), I put that aside. Nor have I worked through his, rather complex, paper to the extent necessary, yet. What about the “old evidence” problem, made famous by Clark Glymour 1980?  What is it? Continue reading →

Categories: Bayesian priors, objective Bayesians, Statistics | Tags: | 25 Comments

Statistical skepticism: How to use significance tests effectively: 7 challenges & how to respond to them

Posted on October 13, 2017 by Mayo

Here are my slides from the ASA Symposium on Statistical Inference : “A World Beyond p < .05”  in the session, “What are the best uses for P-values?”. (Aside from me,our session included Yoav Benjamini and David Robinson, with chair: Nalini Ravishanker.)

7 QUESTIONS

  • Why use a tool that infers from a single (arbitrary) P-value that pertains to a statistical hypothesis H0 to a research claim H*?
  • Why use an incompatible hybrid (of Fisher and N-P)?
  • Why apply a method that uses error probabilities, the sampling distribution, researcher “intentions” and violates the likelihood principle (LP)? You should condition on the data.
  • Why use methods that overstate evidence against a null hypothesis?
  • Why do you use a method that presupposes the underlying statistical model?
  • Why use a measure that doesn’t report effect sizes?
  • Why do you use a method that doesn’t provide posterior probabilities (in hypotheses)?

 

Categories: P-values, spurious p values, statistical tests, Statistics | Leave a comment

Egon Pearson’s Heresy

Posted on August 25, 2017 by Mayo

E.S. Pearson: 11 Aug 1895-12 June 1980.

Here’s one last entry in honor of Egon Pearson’s birthday: “Statistical Concepts in Their Relation to Reality” (Pearson 1955). I’ve posted it several times over the years (6!), but always find a new gem or two, despite its being so short. E. Pearson rejected some of the familiar tenets that have come to be associated with Neyman and Pearson (N-P) statistical tests, notably the idea that the essential justification for tests resides in a long-run control of rates of erroneous interpretations–what he termed the “behavioral” rationale of tests. In an unpublished letter E. Pearson wrote to Birnbaum (1974), he talks about N-P theory admitting of two interpretations: behavioral and evidential:

“I think you will pick up here and there in my own papers signs of evidentiality, and you can say now that we or I should have stated clearly the difference between the behavioral and evidential interpretations. Certainly we have suffered since in the way the people have concentrated (to an absurd extent often) on behavioral interpretations”.

(Nowadays, some people concentrate to an absurd extent on “science-wise error rates in dichotomous screening”.) Continue reading →

Categories: phil/history of stat, Philosophy of Statistics, Statistics | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Performance or Probativeness? E.S. Pearson’s Statistical Philosophy

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Mayo
egon pearson

E.S. Pearson (11 Aug, 1895-12 June, 1980)

This is a belated birthday post for E.S. Pearson (11 August 1895-12 June, 1980). It’s basically a post from 2012 which concerns an issue of interpretation (long-run performance vs probativeness) that’s badly confused these days. I’ll blog some E. Pearson items this week, including, my latest reflection on a historical anecdote regarding Egon and the woman he wanted marry, and surely would have, were it not for his father Karl!

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY EGON!

Are methods based on error probabilities of use mainly to supply procedures which will not err too frequently in some long run? (performance). Or is it the other way round: that the control of long run error properties are of crucial importance for probing the causes of the data at hand? (probativeness). I say no to the former and yes to the latter. This, I think, was also the view of Egon Sharpe (E.S.) Pearson.  Continue reading →

Categories: highly probable vs highly probed, phil/history of stat, Statistics | Tags: | Leave a comment

Allan Birnbaum: Foundations of Probability and Statistics (27 May 1923 – 1 July 1976)

Posted on May 27, 2017 by Mayo
27 May 1923-1 July 1976

27 May 1923-1 July 1976

Today is Allan Birnbaum’s birthday. In honor of his birthday, I’m posting the articles in the Synthese volume that was dedicated to his memory in 1977. The editors describe it as their way of  “paying homage to Professor Birnbaum’s penetrating and stimulating work on the foundations of statistics”. I paste a few snippets from the articles by Giere and Birnbaum. If you’re interested in statistical foundations, and are unfamiliar with Birnbaum, here’s a chance to catch up. (Even if you are, you may be unaware of some of these key papers.)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALLAN!

Synthese Volume 36, No. 1 Sept 1977: Foundations of Probability and Statistics, Part I

Editorial Introduction:

This special issue of Synthese on the foundations of probability and statistics is dedicated to the memory of Professor Allan Birnbaum. Professor Birnbaum’s essay ‘The Neyman-Pearson Theory as Decision Theory; and as Inference Theory; with a Criticism of the Lindley-Savage Argument for Bayesian Theory’ was received by the editors of Synthese in October, 1975, and a decision was made to publish a special symposium consisting of this paper together with several invited comments and related papers. The sad news about Professor Birnbaum’s death reached us in the summer of 1976, but the editorial project could nevertheless be completed according to the original plan. By publishing this special issue we wish to pay homage to Professor Birnbaum’s penetrating and stimulating work on the foundations of statistics. We are grateful to Professor Ronald Giere who wrote an introductory essay on Professor Birnbaum’s concept of statistical evidence and who compiled a list of Professor Birnbaum’s publications.

THE EDITORS

Continue reading →

Categories: Birnbaum, Likelihood Principle, Statistics, strong likelihood principle | Tags: | 1 Comment

3 YEARS AGO (APRIL 2014): MEMORY LANE

Posted on May 15, 2017 by Mayo
3 years ago...

3 years ago…

MONTHLY MEMORY LANE: 3 years ago: April 2014. I mark in red three posts from each month that seem most apt for general background on key issues in this blog, excluding those reblogged recently[1], and in green up to 4 others I’d recommend[2].  Posts that are part of a “unit” or a group count as one. For this month, I’ll include all the 6334 seminars as “one”.

April 2014

  • (4/1) April Fool’s. Skeptical and enthusiastic Bayesian priors for beliefs about insane asylum renovations at Dept of Homeland Security: I’m skeptical and unenthusiastic
  • (4/3) Self-referential blogpost (conditionally accepted*)
  • (4/5) Who is allowed to cheat? I.J. Good and that after dinner comedy hour. . ..
     
  • (4/6) Phil6334: Duhem’s Problem, highly probable vs highly probed; Day #9 Slides
  • (4/8) “Out Damned Pseudoscience: Non-significant results are the new ‘Significant’ results!” (update)
  • (4/12) “Murder or Coincidence?” Statistical Error in Court: Richard Gill (TEDx video)
  • (4/14) Phil6334: Notes on Bayesian Inference: Day #11 Slides
  • (4/16) A. Spanos: Jerzy Neyman and his Enduring Legacy
  • (4/17) Duality: Confidence intervals and the severity of tests
  • (4/19) Getting Credit (or blame) for Something You Didn’t Do (BP oil spill)
  • (4/21) Phil 6334: Foundations of statistics and its consequences: Day#12
  • (4/23) Phil 6334 Visitor: S. Stanley Young, “Statistics and Scientific Integrity”
  • (4/26) Reliability and Reproducibility: Fraudulent p-values through multiple testing (and other biases): S. Stanley Young (Phil 6334: Day #13)
  • (4/30) Able Stats Elba: 3 Palindrome nominees for April! (rejected post)

 

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

[2] New Rule, July 30,2016, March 30,2017 (moved to 4) -very convenient way to allow data-dependent choices.

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

Jerzy Neyman and “Les Miserables Citations” (statistical theater in honor of his birthday)

Posted on April 18, 2017 by Mayo
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Neyman April 16, 1894 – August 5, 1981

For my final Jerzy Neyman item, here’s the post I wrote for his birthday last year: 

A local acting group is putting on a short theater production based on a screenplay I wrote:  “Les Miserables Citations” (“Those Miserable Quotes”) [1]. The “miserable” citations are those everyone loves to cite, from their early joint 1933 paper:

We are inclined to think that as far as a particular hypothesis is concerned, no test based upon the theory of probability can by itself provide any valuable evidence of the truth or falsehood of that hypothesis.

But we may look at the purpose of tests from another viewpoint. Without hoping to know whether each separate hypothesis is true or false, we may search for rules to govern our behavior with regard to them, in following which we insure that, in the long run of experience, we shall not be too often wrong. (Neyman and Pearson 1933, pp. 290-1).

In this early paper, Neyman and Pearson were still groping toward the basic concepts of tests–for example, “power” had yet to be coined. Taken out of context, these quotes have led to knee-jerk (behavioristic) interpretations which neither Neyman nor Pearson would have accepted. What was the real context of those passages? Well, the paper opens, just five paragraphs earlier, with a discussion of a debate between two French probabilists—Joseph Bertrand, author of “Calculus of Probabilities” (1907), and Emile Borel, author of “Le Hasard” (1914)! According to Neyman, what served “as an inspiration to Egon S. Pearson and myself in our effort to build a frequentist theory of testing hypotheses”(1977, p. 103) initially grew out of remarks of Borel, whose lectures Neyman had attended in Paris. He returns to the Bertrand-Borel debate in four different papers, and circles back to it often in his talks with his biographer, Constance Reid. His student Erich Lehmann (1993), regarded as the authority on Neyman, wrote an entire paper on the topic: “The Bertrand-Borel Debate and the Origins of the Neyman Pearson Theory”. Continue reading →

Categories: E.S. Pearson, Neyman, Statistics | Leave a comment

Neyman: Distinguishing tests of statistical hypotheses and tests of significance might have been a lapse of someone’s pen

Posted on April 17, 2017 by Mayo
neyman

April 16, 1894 – August 5, 1981

I’ll continue to post Neyman-related items this week in honor of his birthday. This isn’t the only paper in which Neyman makes it clear he denies a distinction between a test of  statistical hypotheses and significance tests. He and E. Pearson also discredit the myth that the former is only allowed to report pre-data, fixed error probabilities, and are justified only by dint of long-run error control. Controlling the “frequency of misdirected activities” in the midst of finding something out, or solving a problem of inquiry, on the other hand, are epistemological goals. What do you think?

“Tests of Statistical Hypotheses and Their Use in Studies of Natural Phenomena”
by Jerzy Neyman

ABSTRACT. Contrary to ideas suggested by the title of the conference at which the present paper was presented, the author is not aware of a conceptual difference between a “test of a statistical hypothesis” and a “test of significance” and uses these terms interchangeably. A study of any serious substantive problem involves a sequence of incidents at which one is forced to pause and consider what to do next. In an effort to reduce the frequency of misdirected activities one uses statistical tests. The procedure is illustrated on two examples: (i) Le Cam’s (and associates’) study of immunotherapy of cancer and (ii) a socio-economic experiment relating to low-income homeownership problems.

I recommend, especially, the example on home ownership. Here are two snippets: Continue reading →

Categories: Error Statistics, Neyman, Statistics | Tags: | 2 Comments

If you’re seeing limb-sawing in P-value logic, you’re sawing off the limbs of reductio arguments

Posted on April 15, 2017 by Mayo

images-2I was just reading a paper by Martin and Liu (2014) in which they allude to the “questionable logic of proving H0 false by using a calculation that assumes it is true”(p. 1704).  They say they seek to define a notion of “plausibility” that

“fits the way practitioners use and interpret p-values: a small p-value means H0 is implausible, given the observed data,” but they seek “a probability calculation that does not require one to assume that H0 is true, so one avoids the questionable logic of proving H0 false by using a calculation that assumes it is true“(Martin and Liu 2014, p. 1704).

Questionable? A very standard form of argument is a reductio (ad absurdum) wherein a claim C  is inferred (i.e., detached) by falsifying ~C, that is, by showing that assuming ~C entails something in conflict with (if not logically contradicting) known results or known truths [i]. Actual falsification in science is generally a statistical variant of this argument. Supposing H0 in p-value reasoning plays the role of ~C. Yet some aver it thereby “saws off its own limb”! Continue reading →

Categories: P-values, reforming the reformers, Statistics | 13 Comments

3 YEARS AGO (MARCH 2014): MEMORY LANE

Posted on April 9, 2017 by Mayo
3 years ago...

3 years ago…

MONTHLY MEMORY LANE: 3 years ago: March 2014. I mark in red three posts from each month that seem most apt for general background on key issues in this blog, excluding those reblogged recently[1], and in green up to 4 others I’d recommend[2].  Posts that are part of a “unit” or a group count as one. 3/19 and 3/17 are one, as are  3/19, 3/12 and 3/4, and the 6334 items 3/11, 3/22 and 3/26. So that covers nearly all the posts!

March 2014

 

  • (3/1) Cosma Shalizi gets tenure (at last!) (metastat announcement)
  • (3/2) Significance tests and frequentist principles of evidence: Phil6334 Day #6
  • (3/3) Capitalizing on Chance (ii)
  • (3/4) Power, power everywhere–(it) may not be what you think! [illustration]
  • (3/8) Msc kvetch: You are fully dressed (even under you clothes)?
  • (3/8) Fallacy of Rejection and the Fallacy of Nouvelle Cuisine
  • (3/11) Phil6334 Day #7: Selection effects, the Higgs and 5 sigma, Power
  • (3/12) Get empowered to detect power howlers
  • (3/15) New SEV calculator (guest app: Durvasula)
  • (3/17) Stephen Senn: “Delta Force: To what extent is clinical relevance relevant?” (Guest Post)

     

     

  • (3/19) Power taboos: Statue of Liberty, Senn, Neyman, Carnap, Severity
  • (3/22) Fallacies of statistics & statistics journalism, and how to avoid them: Summary & Slides Day #8 (Phil 6334)
  • (3/25) The Unexpected Way Philosophy Majors Are Changing The World Of Business

     

  • (3/26) Phil6334:Misspecification Testing: Ordering From A Full Diagnostic Menu (part 1)
  • (3/28) Severe osteometric probing of skeletal remains: John Byrd
  • (3/29) Winner of the March 2014 palindrome contest (rejected post)
  • (3/30) Phil6334: March 26, philosophy of misspecification testing (Day #9 slides)

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

[2] New Rule, July 30,2016, March 30,2017 (moved to 4) -very convenient way to allow data-dependent choices.

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

Er, about those other approaches, hold off until a balanced appraisal is in

Posted on April 1, 2017 by Mayo

I could have told them that the degree of accordance enabling the ASA’s “6 principles” on p-values was unlikely to be replicated when it came to most of the “other approaches” with which some would supplement or replace significance tests– notably Bayesian updating, Bayes factors, or likelihood ratios (confidence intervals are dual to hypotheses tests). [My commentary is here.] So now they may be advising a “hold off” or “go slow” approach until some consilience is achieved. Is that it? I don’t know. I was tweeted an article about the background chatter taking place behind the scenes; I wasn’t one of people interviewed for this. Here are some excerpts, I may add more later after it has had time to sink in. (check back later)

“Reaching for Best Practices in Statistics: Proceed with Caution Until a Balanced Critique Is In”

J. Hossiason

“[A]ll of the other approaches*, as well as most statistical tools, may suffer from many of the same problems as the p-values do. What level of likelihood ratio in favor of the research hypothesis will be acceptable to the journal? Should scientific discoveries be based on whether posterior odds pass a specific threshold (P3)? Does either measure the size of an effect (P5)?…How can we decide about the sample size needed for a clinical trial—however analyzed—if we do not set a specific bright-line decision rule? 95% confidence intervals or credence intervals…offer no protection against selection when only those that do not cover 0, are selected into the abstract (P4). (Benjamini, ASA commentary, pp. 3-4)

What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander right?  Many statisticians seconded George Cobb who urged “the board to set aside time at least once every year to consider the potential value of similar statements” to the recent ASA p-value report. Disappointingly, a preliminary survey of leaders in statistics, many from the original p-value group, aired striking disagreements on best and worst practices with respect to these other approaches. The Executive Board is contemplating a variety of recommendations, minimally, that practitioners move with caution until they can put forward at least a few agreed upon principles for interpreting and applying Bayesian inference methods. The words we heard ranged from “go slow” to “moratorium“ [emphasis mine]. Having been privy to some of the results of this survey, we at Stat Report Watch decided to contact some of the individuals involved. Continue reading →

Categories: P-values, reforming the reformers, Statistics | 6 Comments

BOSTON COLLOQUIUM FOR PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE: Understanding Reproducibility & Error Correction in Science

Posted on March 13, 2017 by Mayo

BOSTON COLLOQUIUM FOR PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

2016–2017
57th Annual Program

Download the 57th Annual Program

The Alfred I. Taub forum:

UNDERSTANDING REPRODUCIBILITY & ERROR CORRECTION IN SCIENCE

Cosponsored by GMS and BU’s BEST at Boston University.
Friday, March 17, 2017
1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
The Terrace Lounge, George Sherman Union
775 Commonwealth Avenue

  • Reputation, Variation, &, Control: Historical Perspectives
    Jutta Schickore History and Philosophy of Science & Medicine, Indiana University, Bloomington.
  • Crisis in Science: Time for Reform?
    Arturo Casadevall Molecular Microbiology & Immunology, Johns Hopkins
  • Severe Testing: The Key to Error Correction
    Deborah Mayo Philosophy, Virginia Tech
  • Replicate That…. Maintaining a Healthy Failure Rate in Science
    Stuart Firestein Biological Sciences, Columbia

 

boston-mayo-2017

Categories: Announcement, Statistical fraudbusting, Statistics | Leave a comment

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