You just say "Bayesian," and people think you are some kind of genius.
(Gary Churchill, quoted in Science)
Ned Dochtermann
-----Original Message-----
From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of DeSolla,Shane [Burlington]
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2006 12:54 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: The Earth is round (B<0.5)
So, I take it a Bayesian can say, "the null hypothesis is only P=0.0372
likely to be true", or something to that effect? Instead of frequencists
saying "Assuming the null hypothesis is true, the observed difference was
3.72% likely to occur due to random sampling error".
Must be nice....
Cheers,
Shane
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Anon.
> Sent: Monday, February 27, 2006 3:20 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: The Earth is round (B<0.5)
>
>
> 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
>
