At 01:16 PM 4/10/00 -0300, Robert Dawson wrote:
> No.... if you have to start "a more sensible null would be perhaps" you
>almost surely do not have a hypothesis worth testing.
now we get to the crux of the matter ... WHY do we need a null ... or any
hypothesis ... (credible and/or sensible) to test??? what is the scientific
need for this? what is the rationale within statistical exploration for this?
i am not suggesting that we don't need or must not deal with inferences
from sample data to what parameters might be ... but, i fail to see WHY
that necessarily means that one has to have a null hypothesis of any kind
perhaps this is what needs to be debated more ... what function does having
a hypothesis really have? if any ...
it would be useful if we could have some short listing of reasons why ....
and, some examples where WITHOUT a hypothesis, we are unable to make any
scientific progress
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