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P-value
In null-hypothesis significance testing, the ''p''-value is the probability of obtaining test results at least as extreme as the result actually observed, under the assumption that the null hypothesis is correct. A very small ''p''-value means that such an extreme observed outcome would be very unlikely under the null hypothesis. Reporting ''p''-values of statistical tests is common practice in academic publications of many quantitative fields. Since the precise meaning of ''p''-value is hard to grasp, misuse is widespread and has been a major topic in metascience. Basic concepts In statistics, every conjecture concerning the unknown probability distribution of a collection of random variables representing the observed data X in some study is called a ''statistical hypothesis''. If we state one hypothesis only and the aim of the statistical test is to see whether this hypothesis is tenable, but not to investigate other specific hypotheses, then such a test is called a null ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Fisher's Combined Probability Test
In statistics, Fisher's method, also known as Fisher's combined probability test, is a technique for data fusion or "meta-analysis" (analysis of analyses). It was developed by and named for Ronald Fisher. In its basic form, it is used to combine the results from several independence tests bearing upon the same overall hypothesis (''H''0). Application to independent test statistics Fisher's method combines extreme value probabilities from each test, commonly known as "p-values", into one test statistic (''X''2) using the formula :X^2_ \sim -2\sum_^k \log(p_i), where ''p''''i'' is the p-value for the ''i''th hypothesis test. When the p-values tend to be small, the test statistic ''X''2 will be large, which suggests that the null hypotheses are not true for every test. When all the null hypotheses are true, and the ''p''''i'' (or their corresponding test statistics) are independent, ''X''2 has a chi-squared distribution with 2''k'' degrees of freedom, where ''k'' is the num ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Statistical Significance
In statistical hypothesis testing, a result has statistical significance when it is very unlikely to have occurred given the null hypothesis (simply by chance alone). More precisely, a study's defined significance level, denoted by \alpha, is the probability of the study rejecting the null hypothesis, given that the null hypothesis is true; and the ''p''-value of a result, ''p'', is the probability of obtaining a result at least as extreme, given that the null hypothesis is true. The result is statistically significant, by the standards of the study, when p \le \alpha. The significance level for a study is chosen before data collection, and is typically set to 5% or much lower—depending on the field of study. In any experiment or observation that involves drawing a sample from a population, there is always the possibility that an observed effect would have occurred due to sampling error alone. But if the ''p''-value of an observed effect is less than (or equal to) the significan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Statistical Hypothesis Testing
A statistical hypothesis test is a method of statistical inference used to decide whether the data at hand sufficiently support a particular hypothesis. Hypothesis testing allows us to make probabilistic statements about population parameters. History Early use While hypothesis testing was popularized early in the 20th century, early forms were used in the 1700s. The first use is credited to John Arbuthnot (1710), followed by Pierre-Simon Laplace (1770s), in analyzing the human sex ratio at birth; see . Modern origins and early controversy Modern significance testing is largely the product of Karl Pearson ( ''p''-value, Pearson's chi-squared test), William Sealy Gosset ( Student's t-distribution), and Ronald Fisher ("null hypothesis", analysis of variance, " significance test"), while hypothesis testing was developed by Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson (son of Karl). Ronald Fisher began his life in statistics as a Bayesian (Zabell 1992), but Fisher soon grew disenchanted ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Likelihood Principle
In statistics, the likelihood principle is the proposition that, given a statistical model, all the evidence in a sample relevant to model parameters is contained in the likelihood function. A likelihood function arises from a probability density function considered as a function of its distributional parameterization argument. For example, consider a model which gives the probability density function \; f_X(x \,\vert\, \theta)\; of observable random variable \, X \, as a function of a parameter \,\theta~. Then for a specific value \,x\, of \,X~, the function \,\mathcal(\theta \,\vert\, x) = f_X(x \,\vert\, \theta)\; is a likelihood function of \,\theta\;:~ it gives a measure of how "likely" any particular value of \,\theta\, is, if we know that \,X\, has the value \,x~. The density function may be a density with respect to counting measure, i.e. a probability mass function. Two likelihood functions are ''equivalent'' if one is a scalar multiple of the other. The l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Misuse Of P-values
Misuse of ''p''-values is common in scientific research and scientific education. ''p''-values are often used or interpreted incorrectly; the American Statistical Association states that ''p''-values can indicate how incompatible the data are with a specified statistical model. From a Neyman–Pearson hypothesis testing approach to statistical inferences, the data obtained by comparing the ''p''-value to a significance level will yield one of two results: either the null hypothesis is rejected (which however does not prove that the null hypothesis is ''false''), or the null hypothesis ''cannot'' be rejected at that significance level (which however does not prove that the null hypothesis is ''true''). From a Fisherian statistical testing approach to statistical inferences, a low ''p''-value means ''either'' that the null hypothesis is true and a highly improbable event has occurred ''or'' that the null hypothesis is false. Clarifications about ''p''-values The following list cl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Z-test
A ''Z''-test is any statistical test for which the distribution of the test statistic under the null hypothesis can be approximated by a normal distribution. Z-tests test the mean of a distribution. For each significance level in the confidence interval, the ''Z''-test has a single critical value (for example, 1.96 for 5% two tailed) which makes it more convenient than the Student's ''t''-test whose critical values are defined by the sample size (through the corresponding degrees of freedom). Both the Z test and Student's t-test have similarities in that they both help determine the significance of a set of data. However, the z-test is rarely used in practice because the population deviation is difficult to determine. Applicability Because of the central limit theorem, many test statistics are approximately normally distributed for large samples. Therefore, many statistical tests can be conveniently performed as approximate ''Z''-tests if the sample size is large or the populat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Test Statistic
A test statistic is a statistic (a quantity derived from the sample) used in statistical hypothesis testing.Berger, R. L.; Casella, G. (2001). ''Statistical Inference'', Duxbury Press, Second Edition (p.374) A hypothesis test is typically specified in terms of a test statistic, considered as a numerical summary of a data-set that reduces the data to one value that can be used to perform the hypothesis test. In general, a test statistic is selected or defined in such a way as to quantify, within observed data, behaviours that would distinguish the null from the alternative hypothesis, where such an alternative is prescribed, or that would characterize the null hypothesis if there is no explicitly stated alternative hypothesis. An important property of a test statistic is that its sampling distribution under the null hypothesis must be calculable, either exactly or approximately, which allows ''p''-values to be calculated. A ''test statistic'' shares some of the same qualities of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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P-hacking
Data dredging (also known as data snooping or ''p''-hacking) is the misuse of data analysis to find patterns in data that can be presented as statistically significant, thus dramatically increasing and understating the risk of false positives. This is done by performing many statistical tests on the data and only reporting those that come back with significant results. The process of data dredging involves testing multiple hypotheses using a single data set by exhaustively searching—perhaps for combinations of variables that might show a correlation, and perhaps for groups of cases or observations that show differences in their mean or in their breakdown by some other variable. Conventional tests of statistical significance are based on the probability that a particular result would arise if chance alone were at work, and necessarily accept some risk of mistaken conclusions of a certain type (mistaken rejections of the null hypothesis). This level of risk is called the ''si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Metascience
Metascience (also known as meta-research) is the use of scientific methodology to study science itself. Metascience seeks to increase the quality of scientific research while reducing inefficiency. It is also known as "''research on research''" and "''the science of science''", as it uses research methods to study how research is done and find where improvements can be made. Metascience concerns itself with all fields of research and has been described as "a bird's eye view of science". In the words of John Ioannidis, "Science is the best thing that has happened to human beings ... but we can do it better." In 1966, an early meta-research paper examined the statistical methods of 295 papers published in ten high-profile medical journals. It found that "in almost 73% of the reports read ... conclusions were drawn when the justification for these conclusions was invalid." Meta-research in the following decades found many methodological flaws, inefficiencies, and poor practices ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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T-test
A ''t''-test is any statistical hypothesis test in which the test statistic follows a Student's ''t''-distribution under the null hypothesis. It is most commonly applied when the test statistic would follow a normal distribution if the value of a scaling term in the test statistic were known (typically, the scaling term is unknown and therefore a nuisance parameter). When the scaling term is estimated based on the data, the test statistic—under certain conditions—follows a Student's ''t'' distribution. The ''t''-test's most common application is to test whether the means of two populations are different. History The term "''t''-statistic" is abbreviated from "hypothesis test statistic". In statistics, the t-distribution was first derived as a posterior distribution in 1876 by Helmert and Lüroth. The t-distribution also appeared in a more general form as Pearson Type IV distribution in Karl Pearson's 1895 paper. However, the T-Distribution, also known as Student's t-distr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Student's T-distribution
In probability and statistics, Student's ''t''-distribution (or simply the ''t''-distribution) is any member of a family of continuous probability distributions that arise when estimating the mean of a normally distributed population in situations where the sample size is small and the population's standard deviation is unknown. It was developed by English statistician William Sealy Gosset under the pseudonym "Student". The ''t''-distribution plays a role in a number of widely used statistical analyses, including Student's ''t''-test for assessing the statistical significance of the difference between two sample means, the construction of confidence intervals for the difference between two population means, and in linear regression analysis. Student's ''t''-distribution also arises in the Bayesian analysis of data from a normal family. If we take a sample of n observations from a normal distribution, then the ''t''-distribution with \nu=n-1 degrees of freedom can be d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |