Best thing I have read today:
"Statistics means never having to say you are certain. If a statistical conclusion ever seems certain, you probably are misunderstanding something. The whole point of statistics is to quantify uncertainty."
"Statistics means never having to say you are certain. If a statistical conclusion ever seems certain, you probably are misunderstanding something. The whole point of statistics is to quantify uncertainty."
I am going to keep this going for now:
"Every statistical inference is based on a list of assumptions. Don't try to interpret any statistical results until after you have reviewed that list...1/3
"Every statistical inference is based on a list of assumptions. Don't try to interpret any statistical results until after you have reviewed that list...1/3
...An assumption behind every statistical calculation is that the data were randomly sampled, or at least representative of, a larger population of values that could have been collected...2/3
If your data are not representative of a larger set of data you could have collected (but didn't), then statistical inference makes no sense." 3/3
"Analyzing data requires many decisions. Parametric or nonparametric test? Eliminate outliers or not? Transform the data first? Normalize to external control values? Adjust for covariates? Use weighting factors in regression? 1/2
All these decisions should be part of the experimental design. When these decisions are made after inspecting the data, it is too easy for statistical analysis to produce preordained results, rather an objective method of analyzing data. The new name for this is p-hacking." 2/2
"Say you've computed the mean of a set of values you've collected, or the proportion of subjects where some event happened. Those values describe the sample you've analyzed. But what about the overall population you sampled from?.. .1/3
...The true population mean might be higher, or it might be lower. The calculation of a 95% confidence interval (CI) takes into account sample size and scatter. Given a set of assumptions, you can be 95% sure that the CI includes the true population value...2/3
...(which you could only know for sure by collecting an infinite amount of data). CIs can be computed for any degree of desired confidence. Almost all results-proportions, relative risks, odds ratios, means, differences in means, slopes, rate constants, should be with a CI" 3/3
