Great discussion. Tim's Sinclair quote is priceless and relates to the non-reproducible research done in some quarters. Norm's wish to remove stars altogether is entirely consistent with good statistical practice and would make a statement that R base adheres to good practice. I don't think it will work to add confidence intervals because models can have nonlinear or interaction terms, and the reference cell for a factor variable may not be what the analyst chooses for a comparison group.
I would like for us to find a way to, over time, implement Norm's wish to de-emphasize P-values in general. The harm done by P-values is immeasureable. Frank Norm Matloff wrote > I appreciate Tim's comments. > > I myself have a "social science" paper coming out soon in which I felt > forced to use p-values, given their ubiquity. However, I also told > readers of the paper that confidence intervals are much more informative > and I do provide them. As I said earlier, there is no avoiding that, > and R needs to report p-values for that reason. > > Instead, the question is what to do about the stars; I proposed > eliminating them altogether. Star-crazed users know how to determine > them themselves from the p-values, but deleting them from R would send a > message. > > I did say my proposal was "bold," which really meant I was suggesting > that R do SOMETHING to send that message, not necessarily star > elimination. > > One such "something" would be the proposal I made, which would be to add > confidence intervals to the output. This too could be just an option, > but again offering that option would send a message. Indeed, I would > suggest that the help page explain that confidence intervals are more > informative. (The help page could make a similar statement regarding > the stars.) > > When I pitch R to people, I say that in addition to the large function > and library base and the nice graphics capabilities, R is above all > Statistically Correct--it's written by statisticians who know what they > are doing, rather than some programmer simply implementing a formula > from a textbook. I know that a lot of people feel this is one of R's > biggest strengths. Given that, one might argue that R should do what it > can to help users engage in good statistical practice. I think this was > Frank's point. > > Norm > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@ > mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel ----- Frank Harrell Department of Biostatistics, Vanderbilt University -- View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Regression-stars-tp4657795p4658084.html Sent from the R devel mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel