In article <001501c1482f$756d6190$e10e6a81@PEDUCT225>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
#If your purpose is to try and teach students about confidence intervals, #then it makes little sense to start out by telling them the #counterexamples. Why not? My purpose would be to teach students that confidence intervals are NOT what most people think they are. Why teach students a broken concept? #I don't start telling students about standard deviations by describing a #Cauchy distribution. Now if we are going to do away with confidence #intervals because of a few situations (probably contrived) where they don't #work, then we need to rewrite a lot of statistics texts. Confidence intervals don't tell me (as a physical scientist) what ->>I<<- want to know. So, doing away with them sounds like a good idea to me. And rewriting a lot of statistics texts sounds like a good idea as well. Bill ---- #Maybe the #qualitative people have the right idea. Don't use numbers at all. # #Paul R. Swank, Ph.D. #Professor #Developmental Pediatrics #UT Houston Health Science Center # #-----Original Message----- #From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] #[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Bill Jefferys #Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2001 4:00 PM #To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] #Subject: Re: Confidence intervals # # #In article <000101c14787$f06dcf90$e10e6a81@PEDUCT225>, #<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: # ##No more than hypothesis tests necessarily tell you when the null ##hypothesis ##is false. Nothing is certain in statistics but uncertainty. # #In what way does a CI tell you where the parameter was (your word), if #you can see just by looking at the data that it is impossible for the #data to lie in the CI? # #Bill # # ##Paul R. Swank, Ph.D. ##Professor ##Developmental Pediatrics ##UT Houston Health Science Center ## ##-----Original Message----- ##From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ##[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Bill Jefferys ##Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2001 11:31 AM ##To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ##Subject: Re: Confidence intervals ## ## ##In article <008201c14763$9392f260$e10e6a81@PEDUCT225>, ##<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ## ###I use to find that students respoded well to the idea that the #hypothesis ###test told you, within the limits of likelihood set, where the parameter ###wasn't while confidence intervals told you where the parameter was. ## ##But confidence intervals do not necessarily tell you where the parameter ##was. Jaynes gives an example of a 90% confidence interval, such that you ##can see from the data that it is certain that the parameter does NOT lie ##in the interval in question. Tom Loredo gives essentially the same ##example in ## ## http://bayes.wustl.edu/gregory/articles.pdf ## http://bayes.wustl.edu/gregory/articles.ps.gz ## # #-- #Bill Jefferys/Department of Astronomy/University of Texas/Austin, TX 78712 #Email: replace 'warthog' with 'clyde' | Homepage: quasar.as.utexas.edu #I report spammers to [EMAIL PROTECTED] #Finger for PGP Key: F7 11 FB 82 C6 21 D8 95 2E BD F7 6E 99 89 E1 82 #Unlawful to use this email address for unsolicited ads: USC Title 47 Sec #227 # # #================================================================= #Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about #the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at # http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ #================================================================= # # # # #================================================================= #Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about #the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at # http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ #================================================================= -- Bill Jefferys/Department of Astronomy/University of Texas/Austin, TX 78712 Email: replace 'warthog' with 'clyde' | Homepage: quasar.as.utexas.edu I report spammers to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Finger for PGP Key: F7 11 FB 82 C6 21 D8 95 2E BD F7 6E 99 89 E1 82 Unlawful to use this email address for unsolicited ads: USC Title 47 Sec 227 ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =================================================================
