Posts Tagged With: Egon Pearson

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

Today is Egon Pearson’s birthday: 11 August 1895-12 June, 1980.
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 In an unpublished letter E. Pearson wrote to Birnbaum (1974), he talks about N-P theory admitting of two interpretations: behavioral and evidential: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”.)

When Erich Lehmann, in his review of my “Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge” (EGEK 1996), called Pearson “the hero of Mayo’s story,” it was because I found in E.S.P.’s work, if only in brief discussions, hints, and examples, the key elements for an “inferential” or “evidential” interpretation of N-P statistics. Granted, these “evidential” attitudes and practices have never been explicitly codified to guide the interpretation of N-P tests. If they had been, I would not be on about providing an inferential philosophy all these years.[i] Nevertheless, “Pearson and Pearson” statistics (both Egon, not Karl) would have looked very different from Neyman and Pearson statistics, I suspect. One of the few sources of E.S. Pearson’s statistical philosophy is his (1955) “Statistical Concepts in Their Relation to Reality”. It begins like this: Continue reading →

E.S.Pearson on a Gate,             Mayo sketch

Today is Egon Pearson’s birthday (11 Aug., 1895-12 June, 1980); and here you see my scruffy sketch of him, at the start of my book, “Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge” (EGEK 1996). As Erich Lehmann put it in his EGEK review, Pearson is “the hero of Mayo’s story” because I found in his work, if only in brief discussions, hints, and examples, the key elements for an “inferential” or “evidential” interpretation of Neyman-Pearson theory of statistics.  “Pearson and Pearson” statistics (both Egon, not Karl) would have looked very different from Neyman and Pearson statistics, I suspect. One of the few sources of E.S. Pearson’s statistical philosophy is his (1955) “Statistical Concepts in Their Relation to Reality”. It begins like this:

Controversies in the field of mathematical statistics seem largely to have arisen because statisticians have been unable to agree upon how theory is to provide, in terms of probability statements, the numerical measures most helpful to those who have to draw conclusions from observational data.  We are concerned here with the ways in which mathematical theory may be put, as it were, into gear with the common processes of rational thought, and there seems no reason to suppose that there is one best way in which this can be done.  If, therefore, Sir Ronald Fisher recapitulates and enlarges on his views upon statistical methods and scientific induction we can all only be grateful, but when he takes this opportunity to criticize the work of others through misapprehension of their views as he has done in his recent contribution to this Journal (Fisher 1955 “Scientific Methods and Scientific Induction” ), it is impossible to leave him altogether unanswered.

In the first place it seems unfortunate that much of Fisher’s criticism of Neyman and Pearson’s approach to the testing of statistical hypotheses should be built upon a “penetrating observation” ascribed to Professor G.A. Barnard, the assumption involved in which happens to be historically incorrect.  There was no question of a difference in point of view having “originated” when Neyman “reinterpreted” Fisher’s early work on tests of significance “in terms of that technological and commercial apparatus which is known as an acceptance procedure”.  There was no sudden descent upon British soil of Russian ideas regarding the function of science in relation to technology and to five-year plans.  It was really much simpler–or worse.  The original heresy, as we shall see, was a Pearson one!…
Indeed, to dispel the picture of the Russian technological bogey, I might recall how certain early ideas came into my head as I sat on a gate overlooking an experimental blackcurrant plot…!

To continue reading, “Statistical Concepts in Their Relation to Reality” click HERE.

See also Aris Spanos: “Egon Pearson’s Neglected Contributions to Statistics“.

Happy Birthday E.S. Pearson!