At 09:42 AM 9/28/00 -0400, John W. Kulig wrote:

>(snip)
>Say, isn't it time we revived our discussion about how awkward the term
>"significance" is for p statements? For the "n th" time, wouldn't
>_reliability_ be the better word? If p < .05, we conclude the results of
>the study will repeat if the experiment was replicated. That, in my book,
>is the definition of reliability. This was we can dispense, once and for
>all, with adjectives before the word "significance."

Hi John,

I'd be interested to hear what other Tipsters have to say about this.  I don't
teach stats, but my hunch is that using the word "reliability" would likely
lead students to understand that p = .05 means "if we repeated the study 
100 times,
we'd get this result 95 times", when in fact, p = .05 means that *if the 
null hypothesis
were true,* then we'd only expect to get this finding 5 times out of a 100.

-Mike

************************************************
Michael J. Kane
Department of Psychology
P.O. Box 26164
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, NC 27402-6164
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone: 336-256-1022
fax: 336-334-5066

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