The P-value Is Not a Verdict: An Interactive Consonance Curve
Drag an estimate and its interval and watch the entire P-value function, every compatibility interval, and the S-value move together.
Less Likely Blog
Latest posts on statistical science and methodology
Latest posts
How to Be a Good Collaborator to a Statistician and a Data Engineer
Good collaboration with statisticians and data engineers is a set of concrete habits, not goodwill. What each side owes the other, with checklists.
The Octagon Is a One-Trial Experiment
A single MMA fight is not a probability. But repeat it ten times and the better fighter’s edge starts showing. That gap is exactly what frequentism was built for.
Multi-Language Code Examples
Examples of using Stata, Julia, and pseudocode in blog posts
A Critical Look At The REDUCE-IT Trial
The results of the long-awaited REDUCE-IT trial are finally out in The New
Seductive Surrogates Can Be Deadly
A post explaining what surrogate markers are, why we sometimes focus on
How Did We Figure Out Smoking Causes Lung Cancer?
A relatively simple way to conclude a cause and effect relationship in humans is with
The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Fish Oil?
A look at fish oil’s controversial evidence base and how a recently completed
Revisiting Eggs and Dietary Cholesterol
A look at the recent JAMA study that found an association between dietary cholesterol and cardiovascular disease incidence along with a look at the current state of research on this question.
Confidence, Posteriors, and the Bootstrap
This guide discusses the bootstrap resampling method and its close connection to the consonance distribution and how to use certain iterations of the bootstrap to construct a consonance distribution.
Computing Confidence Interval Functions with cifunction
Learn how to compute and visualize confidence interval functions (confidence curves, p-value functions) using the cifunction Stata package. Includes practical examples and implementation guide.
Your Models Are Neither Useful Nor Approximate
A discussion about models and the assumptions that underlie them.
Using Stata: Producing Consonance Functions
A simple guide on how to produce consonance functions in Stata.
Simulation of a Two-Group Parallel-Arm RCT with Interim Analyses
A simulation of a two-group parallel-arm randomized trial with interim analysis using the rpact package.
Tables, Graphs, and Computations from Rafi & Greenland (2020)
This post goes through the R code and logic that was used to construct the figures and concepts in Rafi & Greenland (2020) BMC MRM.
What Makes a Sensitivity Analysis?
Sensitivity analyses are an important part of statistical analyses, however, there are major misconceptions about what they do and what qualifies as such an analysis.
Medicine Is Being Treated with Snake-Oil Statistics
Discussions on statistical science and the applications of statistical methods.
Quality Control in Statistical Analyses
Experienced statisticians and data analysts are familiar with stories where a coding error has led to an entire conclusion changing, even leading to a retraction. It’s the sort of stuff that keeps people up at night.
Book Review: Regression and Other Stories by Gelman, Hill, and Vehtari
An early look at Gelman et als new book, Regression and Other Stories, which is an update to their seminal 2006 book, Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel Hierarchical Models.
Book Review: Fisher, Neyman, and the Creation of Classical Statistics
A review of Erich Lehmann’s last book, Fisher, Neyman, and the Creation of Classical Statistics.
GAMS
Some sample scripts
P-values Are Tough And S-values Can Help
An extensive discussion about what P-values are, their properties, common interpretations, misinterpretations, and how a measure called an S-value may better help us interpret them.