Re: st: interesting reference

[Dale Glaser <glaserconsult@sbcglobal.net>]

Greetings....This is my first missive to the Stata listserv as I just purchased Stata 11.0 having been a SPSS user since mainframe era (as well as LISREL, Mplus, HLM, etc) and thus far I am amazed at the breadth of models in one package (e.g.,ZIP, ARIMA,etc.) and the helpfulness of this listserv. 

I just wanted to add to Nick's message that the controversy in regards to NHST has been brewing in my discipline (social sciences/health care) for years, with an early paper by Rozeboom in the 60s, and then Jacob Cohens paper in American Psychologist (1994) titled: The Earth is Round, p < .05, which served as a springboard for the American Psychological Association to form a task force on statistical inference (which included those in a wise array of disciplines).  Shortly thereafter an edited text by Harlow Mulaik, and Steiger (1997) titled "What if there were no significance tests" further stirred the pot.  Even though much has been written about the misuse of NHST, there still seem to be many transgressions (eg., use of ubiquitous asterisks....* p = .05, ** p = .01, etc., conflation of p-value with effect size, etc). And I still see terminology such as "very significant" or "marginally significant" in published papers.  




Dale Glaser, Ph.D.

Principal--Glaser Consulting
Lecturer/Adjunct Faculty--SDSU/USD/Alliant
Past-President, San Diego Chapter of
American Statistical Association
3115 4th Avenue
San Diego, CA 92103phone: 619-220-0602
fax: 619-220-0412email: glaserconsult@sbcglobal.net

website: www.glaserconsult.com

--- On Thu, 9/30/10, Nick Cox <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk> wrote:

From: Nick Cox <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>
Subject: st: interesting reference
To: "'statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu'" <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
Date: Thursday, September 30, 2010, 7:39 AM

I came across a very interesting article by Esa Läärä (that is Laara with diareses on all the a's). (Experts in Finnish pronunciation and/or biostatisticians familiar with this distinguished colleague may help by explaining how to pronounce that name.) 

2009. Statistics: reasoning on uncertainty, and the insignificance of testing null. Annales Zoologicae Fennici 46: 138-157. 

http://www.sekj.org/PDF/anz46-free/anz46-138.pdf

which touches provocatively on several topics often aired on this list including the uselessness of dynamite or detonator plots, displays for comparing group means and especially the over-use of null hypothesis testing. The main target audience is ecologists but most of the issues cut across statistical science. 


Nick 
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk 



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