At 08:07 PM 4/17/00 +0000, Charles D Madewell wrote:
>As a working engineer and part time graduate student I do not even
>understand why anyone would want to do away with hypothesis testing.
>I have spent many, many hours of my graduate school life learning,
>reading, calculating, and analyzing using hypothesis tests.
>Hypothesis testing is not bad. It is errors in designing the
>experiment that are bad and this comes from PEOPLE not the math. What
>is the fuss? Are you guys telling me that all of this knowledge I am
>being taught will be worthless? Come on, find something else to say....
some of us find it very difficult ... given how we learned/or were taught a
subject matter ... AND how we have been practicing it for dozens and dozens
of years ... to come to the realization that perhaps ... what we have been
taught ... and what we have practiced ... is disproportional to its benefit
and utility ...
if we take all the courses that teach (particularly at the more
introductory levels) statistical material ... and try to establish some
percent of that that deals with hypothesis testing and related matters ...
VERSUS time spent on other things ... and then ask: is all that time worth
the investment of energy?
i think the answer is clearly no ...
but, we are so slow to change ... if we change at all ...
i grew up like that ... and have spent all these years teaching that (have
to fill those students with sufficient statistical info) ... but, the
reality is: hypothesis testing the way we do it ... has limited utility ...
and is overblown to the nth degree
now, that does not mean it is not important ... it is ... just not nearly
as important as our expenditure of time suggests ... for us AND for students
sure, design is much more important than inferential statistics .... but we
have to share some of the blame ... when we push it so ... and as the ONLY
way to go about things ... this is not only using our time unwisely ... but
also doing a disservice to students ...
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