Dear Tipsters, as always, I am amazed by the speed and accuracy of responses on this list; thank you so much, Stephen and Mike! I hope the quotation will drive home a point with a subpopulation of our students who continue to worry about assumptions of ANOVA while simultaneously endorsing ad-hoc 4-point rating scales as dependent variables <sigh>.
Regards, Rainer Dr. Rainer Scheuchenpflug Lehrstuhl für Psychologie III Röntgenring 11 97070 Würzburg Tel: 0931-312185 Fax: 0931-312616 Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- <quote of original messages> Subject: Re: Citation for usefulness of pretests for ANOVA From: "Stephen Black" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 10:17:54 -0400 <my question deleted> I love it when I can answer questions like this. It was George Box who provided that delightful simile. They just don't write about statistics like that any more, do they? The reference is: Box, G.E.P. (1953). Non-normality and tests on variances. Biometrika 40: 318-35. I searched my files but couldn't come up with a copy of the paper. But I found something on- line nearly as good: a "Citation Classic" reminiscence by Box about the circumstances in which this paper came to be. (A "Citation Classic" is an essay which the authors of highly- cited works are asked to provide]. Box gives the famous quotation there as "To make the preliminary test on variances is rather like putting to sea in a rowing boat to find out whether conditions are sufficiently calm for an ocean liner to leave port". That's remarkably close to what Rainer remembered. Pretty good! The Citation Classic of Box is in _Current Contents_, no. 4 January 25, 1982 and is available on-line at: http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/classics1982/A1982MX29400001.pdf Note to editors: the essay concludes with a wonderful anecdote. Box says the referee at Biometrika harshly rejected his paper. But the envelope included a hand-written note from E.S. Pearson, which said "You will see that the referee does not like your paper but I do and subject to mild revision I am going to publish it anyway". Box concludes by noting that papers with novel ideas are the hardest to publish. Stephen ______________________________ Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Bishop's University Lennoxville, QC J1M 1Z7 Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dept web page: www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy TIPS discussion list for psychology teachers at: faculty.frostburg.edu/psyc/southerly/tips/index.htm ______________________________________ Subject: Re: Citation for usefulness of pretests for ANOVA From: "Mike Palij" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 11:12:28 -0400 <snip> For those of you with Jstor.org access, the article is avaiable at: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0006-3444%28195312%2940%3A3%2F4%3C318%3ANAT OV%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J or http://tinyurl.com/zetto -Mike Palij New York University [EMAIL PROTECTED] <end quote> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
