I hate to say this, but thank you.
I have often wondered why so many students would be baffled by the decision
process. [if p<.05, reject the null hypothesis]. It seems so easy… but, if you
are not comfortable with the numbers between 0.00 and 1.00, then it is a real
problem.
Compound that with the fact that, in general, test statistic values go up as
their associated p-values go down and you have now put them in contrasting
information territory. That is, thinking I'm clarifying things with my graphs
and sketches of distributions and shading of rejection regions showing how
bigger t-values are associated with smaller p-values, it seems likely they get
confused by the two ways of making the decision: greater than critical value,
or less than alpha… I can see I'll be rethinking some lectures next semester.
Paul
On Sep 28, 2012, at 7:16 PM, Wuensch, Karl L wrote:
Nope -- my TA would put two numbers up on the board, like .05 and
.032, and ask them, in words, which is lower – or he would put one number up,
like .046, and ask whether it was less than or more than .05.
Cheers,
<image001.jpg><http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/wuenschk/klw.htm>
From: Beth Benoit [mailto:beth.ben...@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2012 6:11 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: Re: [tips] Is p < .05 ?
Karl,
Is it possible they're having trouble with the < vs. the >?
I'd be willing to bet that most Americans - no, slash that - most people
struggle with what those two signs represent. I know, it "ain't rocket
science," but I suspect a lot of people never had that explained to them.
Please say that's what it really is. ;-)
Beth Benoit
Granite State College
Plymouth State University
New Hampshire
On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 5:43 PM, Wuensch, Karl L
<wuens...@ecu.edu<mailto:wuens...@ecu.edu>> wrote:
I am not the greatest fan of NHST, but do my duty to teach it. For a good
while now I have been disturbed that a substantial proportion of my
undergraduate students never figure out how to decide whether or not a test is
significant. I tried stressing that p is a measure of the goodness of fit
between the data and the null, that p is like the strength of evidence in
support of the accused null defendant in statistical court, and so on. Nothing
seemed to help much.
Now one of my teaching assistants has discovered why. Given two
numbers, these students are unable to identify which is smaller. No, I am not
kidding. Yes, this involves numbers between 0 and 1. My TA spend half an hour
trying to teach them how to tell which is the smaller of two numbers, without
great success.
Karl W.
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