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: The Buck Stops Here

Depressing Thoughts for the Day

By Stuart Buck, Esq.

From statistician William Briggs, who puts a statistical program to work on a series of random numbers, and then comes up with a statistical model that has a p value of under .05: I am, of course, a statistician. So perhaps it will seem unusual to you when I say I wish there were fewer statistics done. And by that I mean that I?d like to see less statistical modeling done. I am happy to have more data collected, but am far less sanguine about the proliferation of studies based on statistical methods.There are lots of reasons for this, which I will detail from time to time, but one of the main ones is how easy it is to mislead yourself, particularly if you use statistical procedures in a cookbook fashion. It takes more than a recipe to make an eatable cake...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Buck Stops Here on February 25, 2008 (boomark / email).