How politicians poisoned statistics

Apr 15, 2016

In this article, Tim Harford uses the distinction put forth by the Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt, between those who lie with statistics, and those who simply do not care what the facts are, but use statistics to support their position. The latter can be...

Randomized control trial: The gold standard or overrated?

Feb 27, 2016

While randomized control trial (RCT) have long been seen as the epitome of evidence based research, having served to modernize the field of medicine, this article questions its use to test social policy. The argument is that where RCT’s come into their own when...

How well do you see a correlation?

Feb 9, 2016

We have all read correlation matrixes, and have seen: As a rule of thumb, the following guidelines on strength of relationship are often useful (though many experts would somewhat disagree on the choice of boundaries). Value of r Strength of relationship 1.0 to -0.5...

Intro Statistics 9 Dance of the p Values

I use pictures from the ESCI software to give a brief, easy account of the Dance of the p Values. The simulation illustrates how enormously and disastrously variable the p value is, simply because of sampling variability. Never trust a p value! Use estimation, not NHST!

The dance of the p-values

Jan 12, 2016

Criticizing the use of p-values has begun to be so common place that it is getting dull repeating it. However, in his class on Moderation and Mediation today, Dominique Muller recommended a YouTube presentation called: “The dance of the P-values”. It puts the...

The rater in surveys as a source of bias.

Dec 11, 2015

As a method of collecting data, surveys have been widely criticized for the biases that are included in the data. When the source of biases are the same for both the dependent and the independent variable, (as in, what is used to explain, and what we are seeking to...