In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
dennis roberts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>At 12:09 AM 3/5/01 -0500, Donald Burrill wrote:
>>Well, no. Overrated it may be (that lies, I think, in the eye of the
>>beholder); but a _decision_ it is definitely not. Power is the
>>_probability_ of making a particular decision -- which, of course, like
>>all decisions, may or may not be correct.
>sorry .... we don't MAKE this decision ... the only decision we make in
>this case is to reject the null ... it is only the statisticians
>who overlay onTOP of this ... the consequence OF that reject decision ...
>saying that IF the null had been false (of which the S has no clue about)
>... THEN the consequence of that reject decision is called power
The STATISTICIAN should not make ANY decision; it is the
one using statistics who should make whatever decisions are
made. It is the user's assessment of the consequences of
the decisions and evaluations of the importance of taking
non-optimal actions in the various states of nature which
matter.
The question is not whether that point null is true; the
coin IS almost certainly biased; the treatment almost
certainly has SOME effect. It may still be a good idea
to act as if the null hypothesis is "correct". Only the
user can evaluate the consequences, and only the user
can compare the importance in the various states. The
statistician should help the user act in accordance with
this, and to make the user's task easier by pointing out
which assumptions are important and which are not, from
the standpoint of the user.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
=================================================================
Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about
the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at
http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/
=================================================================
