DeSolla,Shane [Burlington] wrote: >Shouldn't it be, "The Earth is round (B<.05)"? > >After all, the null hypothesis would be that the Earth was round, and >rejecting it would give you, "The Earth is not round (P<.05)" > >According to Cohen, you can only accept a null hypothesis to be true if >the power was high enough to detect the smallest relevant effect size. >Thus, if the Earth did not differ significantly from being round, and >you had a high enough power to detect a relevant degree of "roundness", >then you could declare the Earth was round (Power = 0.95, or B = 0.05; >or whatever your acceptable cutoff for power). The p, of course, would >be bigger than 0.05, or whatever value of alpha you are using. > >Although I am not worthy enough of statistics to comment on this, some >statisticians say you should never use a P-value. But that is for >Bayesians to comment upon... > > > It's one of those amusing little ironies that makes the world what it is that Bayesians are so associated with anti-P-valueism. I think it's fair to say that most applied statisticians know the problems with p-values, but this knowledge hasn't perculated down far enough yet. The irony here is that what most people think a p-value is is actually the Bayesian version.
Before I start ranting, I'll pass on this link to a selection of short articles about stats, aimed at medics but still useful: <http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~mb55/pubs/pbstnote.htm> Have fun! Bob -- Bob O'Hara Department of Mathematics and Statistics P.O. Box 68 (Gustaf Hällströmin katu 2b) FIN-00014 University of Helsinki Finland Telephone: +358-9-191 51479 Mobile: +358 50 599 0540 Fax: +358-9-191 51400 WWW: http://www.RNI.Helsinki.FI/~boh/ Journal of Negative Results - EEB: www.jnr-eeb.org
