A blog about the use of Statistics in science and decision making ... and scientific culture
For years, I have been proposing a relatively simple strategy for better tying quantitative analysis to specific research and decision contexts with the goal of helping researchers give less authority to statistical methods detached from context (e.g., move away from reliance on arbitrary and default statistical criteria). Through work on different projects, I have [ ]
I am still spending a fair amount of time reading, listening, and thinking about various forms of therapy (very generally interpreted as practices/approaches to help us understand and be at peace with our own minds including things like mindfulness practices, meditation, somatic experiencing, psychotherapy, etc.). The time provides intellectual pleasure and of course has [ ]
I enjoy listening to the hours of recorded lectures by Alan Watts (they happen to be easily accessible to me in my favorite meditation app). This quote from my morning listen motivated me to write a few thoughts about objectivity and science, not too different from things I have said before. So people began to [ ]
I happen to be reading James Hollis Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the Second Half of the Journey. And, as seems to happen often, I can t help but see the connections between his descriptions and how I view the way statistical methods are often used in science today. Of course there is no real [ ]
I m back for a long overdue post as I reflect on my number of years on this planet. I officially started this blog 3 years ago on this day when the name came to me on my annual birthday trail run/hike (the blog picture is from that day a beautiful Montana May dusting of [ ]
Andrew Gelman published a post last week titled Stop talking about statistical significance and practical significance. Combined with previous posts he links to, he shares traps people can fall into when using logic/explanations such as its statistically significant, but not practically significant. He points out the importance not forgetting about variation in effect sizes, conveys [ ]
I have talked about cautions and implicit assumptions that surface around the use of averages before, but seeing a few references to the median person in the news a couple of weeks ago led me to writing this post for the Statisticians React to the News blog. I am cross-posting it here. *************************** Last week, [ ]
I was called for jury duty yesterday and spent about 5 hours experiencing the process. I was not ultimately selected for the jury I wasn t even close given where I sat in the long line (3rd from the end). I m not sure if my position near the end was based on information in the [ ]
I started this post a few months ago and it caught my attention as I was looking through drafts. I now can t remember exactly what instigated the draft, but I m guessing it was something in the Philosophize This! podcast pointing me to this entry by Theodore George in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I just [ ]
As president of the American Statistical Association in 2019, Karen Kafadar appointed a task force with the goal to clarify the role of hypothesis tests, p-values, and their relation to replicability as described in her recent editorial in the Annals of Applied Statistics (where she is editor-in-chief). The editorial directly precedes the outcome of [ ]