At 05:38 PM 10/17/00 -0700, David Heiser wrote:
>The 5% is a historical arifact, the result of statistics being invented
>before electronic computers were invented.
an artifact is some anomaly of the data ... but, how could 5% be considered
an artifact DUE to the lack of electronic computers?
>The work in the early 1900's was severely restricted by the fact that
>computations of the cummulative probability distribution involved tedious
>paper and pencil calculations, and later on the use of mechanical
>calculators. Available tables only gave the values for 5% and in some cases
>1%.
thus, the idea is that 5% and/or 1% were "chosen" due to the tables that
were available and not, some logical reasoning for these values?
i don't see any logic to the notion that 5% and/or 1% ... have any special
nor simplification properties compared to say ... 9% or 3%
given that it appears that these same values apply today ... that is, we
have been in a "stuck" mode for all these years ... is not very comforting
given that 5% and/or 1% were opted for because someone had worked out these
columns in a table
=================================================================
Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about
the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at
http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/
=================================================================
