i was not suggesting taking away from our arsenal of tricks ... but, since
i was one of those old guys too ... i am wondering if we were mostly lead
astray ...?
the more i work with statistical methods, the less i see any meaningful (at
the level of dominance that we see it) applications of hypothesis testing ...
here is a typical problem ... and we teach students this!
1. we design a new treatment
2. we do an experiment
3. our null hypothesis is that both 'methods', new and old, produce the
same results
4. we WANT to reject the null (especially if OUR method is better!)
5. we DO a two sample t test (our t was 2.98 with 60 df) and reject the
null ... and in our favor!
6. what has this told us?
if this is ALL you do ... what it has told you AT BEST is that ... the
methods probably are not the same ... but, is that the question of interest
to us?
no ... the real question is: how much difference is there in the two methods?
our t test does NOT say anything about that
1 to 6 can be applied to all sorts of hyp tests ... and most lead us
essentially into a dead end
At 04:23 PM 4/7/00 +0000, j. williams wrote:
>Some of us in the minority would not follow what might be
>"fashionable." I am
>one of those who believe hypothesis testing is still an important and
>integral
>part of statistics. Hypothesis testing is but one tool in the whole arsenal
>however. OTH, I'm an old guy who went through graduate school way back in
>the
>60s. Teaching old dogs new tricks is not easy, right? If such a vote were
>taken today with the results suggested by Mr.Roberts, I know I have
>successfully misled literally thousands of students. Would re-education
>be the
>answer?
>
>
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (dennis roberts) wrote in
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> >let's say that today ... we as the statistical community decided, by
> >democratic vote, that the concept of 'hypothesis testing' ... which has
> >essentially dominated statistical work for as long as i can remember
> >(which, .... er um ... is a LOT of years!) ... is relegated to the 'we
> >USED to do this stuff' category
> >
> >just THINK about this ....
> >
> >what would the vast majority of folks who either do inferential work
> >and/or teach it ... DO????
> >what analyses would they be doing? what would they be teaching?
>
>
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