Nope -- my TA would put two numbers up on the board, like .05 and 
.032, and ask them, in words, which is lower - or he would put one number up, 
like .046, and ask whether it was less than or more than .05.

Cheers,
[Description: Karl L. Wuensch]<http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/wuenschk/klw.htm>
From: Beth Benoit [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2012 6:11 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: Re: [tips] Is p < .05 ?

Karl,
Is it possible they're having trouble with the < vs. the >?

I'd be willing to bet that most Americans - no, slash that - most people 
struggle with what those two signs represent.  I know, it "ain't rocket 
science," but I suspect a lot of people never had that explained to them.

Please say that's what it really is.  ;-)

Beth Benoit
Granite State College
Plymouth State University
New Hampshire

On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 5:43 PM, Wuensch, Karl L 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
     I am not the greatest fan of NHST, but do my duty to teach it.  For a good 
while now I have been disturbed that a substantial proportion of my 
undergraduate students never figure out how to decide whether or not a test is 
significant.  I tried stressing that p is a measure of the goodness of fit 
between the data and the null, that p is like the strength of evidence in 
support of the accused null defendant in statistical court, and so on.  Nothing 
seemed to help much.

        Now one of my teaching assistants has discovered why.  Given two 
numbers, these students are unable to identify which is smaller.  No, I am not 
kidding.  Yes, this involves numbers between 0 and 1.  My TA spend half an hour 
trying to teach them how to tell which is the smaller of two numbers, without 
great success.

Karl W.

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