At 04:31 PM 6/22/00 +0000, Gene Gallagher wrote:
>This pattern was described in an obit about two-three years ago in the
>NY Times. A statistician's obit noted that he'd found a flaw in the
>Israeli air force's training program. Apparently, the Israeli air force
>was punishing the worst performers in a test because this usually
>produced a better performance in subsequent tests and was supposedly
>much more effective than positive reinforcement. They'd found that
>positive reinforcement of the best performers often resulted in a poorer
>performance on the next test. This now-deceased statistician pointed
>out the confounding effect of regression to the mean on this assessement
>of negative and positive reinforcement. The effectiveness of negative
>reinforcement (punishment) could be nothing more than a chance effect.
A few years ago the journal "Statistical Methods in Medical Research"
published an issue on regression to the mean (vol 6, no 2, 1997). It
included the five following papers:
Regression towards the mean, historically considered (pp. 103-114)
M Stigler S.
The impact and implication of regression to the mean on the design and
analysis of medical investigations (115-128)
Chuang-Stein C.,M Tong D.
Adjusting for regression toward the mean when variables are normally
distributed (129-146)
Lin H., Hughes M.
Non-normal variation and regression to the mean (147-166)
Chesher A.
Using regression models for prediction: shrinkage and regression to the
mean (167-183)
Copas J.
Rich Strauss
========================
Dr Richard E Strauss
Biological Sciences
Texas Tech University
Lubbock TX 79409-3131
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Phone: 806-742-2719
Fax: 806-742-2963
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