At 01:52 PM 10/19/00 +0000, Jerry Dallal wrote:
>"Karl L. Wuensch" wrote:
> >
> > The origins of the silly .05 criterion of statistical significance are
> > discussed in the article:
>
>I disagree with the characterization. If it were silly, it would
>not have persisted for 75 years and be so widely used today.
jerry .... do you really believe this? a "thing" can persist because it is
the path of least resistance ... bearing no connection to reality or
usefulness ... AND THAT IS WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THIS CASE
take for example ... the continuation of a term like POINT BISERIAL (just
as an example) in the area of correlation coefficients ... this term has
persisted for decades ... and for what possible current useful purpose?
not only is there nothing "special" about this term ... which is how it is
categorized in some books (still) today ... but it suggests that a person
need to think about whether to use the pearson r or the point biserial
formulas or procedures ... when encountering data where one variable is
dichotomous (no matter how the variable came to be dichotomous) and the
other is continuous ... when these are two different names for the same thing
to make matters even more confusing for users ... in hinkle, weirsma, and
jurs ... 1998 ... there is a table on page 551 what shows variable X and Y
... and the levels of measurement ... with the cross tab between nominal
and interval/ratio being the point biserial ... and as far as i know ...
since the formula has in it ... a p and q value which designates the p for
getting one of the dichotomous values ... and q the other ... and and the
dichotomous variable could clearly be continuous (graduate students = 1 and
undergraduate students = 0) and just artificially made dichotomous for
practicality ... ... i don't see that this distinction is relevant at all
... what we have is simply a different version of the pearson r formula ...
when the data on the dichotomous variable can be "simplified" in the r
formula ...
and it certainly has nothing to do with a "shortcut" formula for
calculating r ... it MAY have decades ago but .... it has not for the past
20 years ...
i am not suggesting that the persistence of the use of the term point
biserial is in the same "problematic" league as the persistence of the use
of .05 ... but the point is that things can persist for NO good reason
finally, where did it become the case that .05 ... is that "comfortable"
level where above it ... you are now in DIScomfort and at or below it ...
you are COMfortable?
as was stated before ... it appears to be the persistence due to the fact
that it was a handy TABLED value a long long time ago ... and tables have
persisted even to this day (though they are not needed) ... and it is a far
sight easier to reprint an EXISTING table than to manufacture a new one
.05 is a totally and irrevocably ARBITRARY VALUE ... there is no way to
defend this nor ANY OTHER VALUE as somehow being THE cut point between
comfort and agony ...
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