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Re:Redefine statistical significance by tw1010 on Thursday September 07, 2017 @12:38PM (#15193445)
This still doesn't feel satisfying. Part of me is still not really happy with the philosophical foundations of statistics. Does anyone know of any legitimately competing theory to statistics? Maybe something that doesn't rest on the same types of mathematics that Fisher and crew relied on when all this started? Pure mathematics has come a long way in the last fifty years but little has seeped into the applied world.
Re:Redefine statistical significance by 168 on Thursday September 07, 2017 @12:54PM (#15193645)
How & why exactly are you unhappy with statistics?
Re:Redefine statistical significance by robterrin on Thursday September 07, 2017 @03:35PM (#15195008)
Uh oh. If you don't watch out you'll end up a Bayesian. http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/unpublished/p_...

Is this along the lines of what you were hoping to find? Here's more: http://andrewgelman.com/2016/12/13/bayesian-statistics-whats...

Re:Redefine statistical significance by drabiega on Thursday September 07, 2017 @01:57PM (#15194212)
It's likely that the problems with statistics are inherently due to the nature of knowledge, so alternative formulations are not likely to help much.
Re:Redefine statistical significance by scryder on Thursday September 07, 2017 @01:41PM (#15194075)
Statistics arises from a set of axioms, assumed truths, which can be used to prove all other things in the field.

You can take a look at the three axioms people use to justify statistics. If you are willing to accept them, all else that relies on them (without using new axioms) must be true:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_axioms

This same logic is used to justify development in pure mathematics: choose a set of axioms which you accept as ground truths, and prove things using them. As long as you are unable to prove your axioms are contradictory, and the axiom choice seems acceptable, then the work that you've done (with respect to them) is philosophically justified.

Re:Redefine statistical significance by tw1010 on Thursday September 07, 2017 @01:57PM (#15194207)
Statistics and probability are different things. I'm fine with the foundations of probability.
Re:Redefine statistical significance by mturmon on Thursday September 07, 2017 @03:32PM (#15194992)
Just for reference, not everyone is OK with the foundations of probability - what you might call "conventional mathematical probability" as axiomatized by Kolmogorov. See http://www2.idsia.ch/cms/isipta-ecsqaru/ for the most recent in a series of workshops.

One entry into this set of ideas is what Peter Walley has called the "Bayesian dogma of precision" - that every event has a precise probability, that every outcome has a known cost. There are real-world situations when these probabilities cannot be assessed, or may not even exist; same for utilities.

Some examples are in betting and markets (asymmetric information, bounded rationality), and in complex simulation environments having so many parameters and encoded physics that the interpretation of their probabilistic predictions is unclear.

Re:Redefine statistical significance by BeetleB on Thursday September 07, 2017 @02:53PM (#15194715)
Please don't treat probability and statistics as one.
Re:Redefine statistical significance by tnecniv on Thursday September 07, 2017 @02:16PM (#15194394)
> Part of me is still not really happy with the philosophical foundations of statistics.

You mean you aren't happy with...probability?