For example, I just computed the Pearson r between statophobia (the first-day amount of self-reported fear of the course expressed by students who have taken stats with me the last several years) and the height of the students' ideal mate. Although "significant" at .003, the r was rather small, .13. The sample size was moderately large, 489. More fun is to see how it is that the students interpret this correlation -- why does statophobia covary with the height of ideal mate?
Karl W.
but, we know the null is not true ... so, why test it? what's the point and utility of that step?
the real question is: what might the rho be between X and Y (whatever that is) ... NOT ... should we reject 0 ...
-----Original Message-----
This is not a fantastically useful concept because it depends on the sample size. For small N very few correlations are statistically significant; for very large N most of them are. As the sample size is usually unrelated to the population, "statistical significance" is not an attribute of the population.
-Robert Dawson . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
---------------------------------------------------------- Dennis Roberts Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://roberts.ed.psu.edu/users/droberts/drober~1.htm
. . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
