Re:Scientists rise up against statistical significance
by jrochkind1 on Wednesday March 20, 2019 @06:39PM
(#19447731)
The OP spends some time on a point that the threshold is fairly arbitrary, and the problem is misinterpreting what it actually _means_ for validity and other conclusions.
I suspect just changing the threshold (especially as a new universal threshold, rather than related to the nature of the experiment) wouldn't even strike the authors as an improvement.
> Third, like the 0.05 threshold from which it came, the default 95% used to compute intervals is itself an arbitrary convention. It is based on the false idea that there is a 95% chance that the computed interval itself contains the true value, coupled with the vague feeling that this is a basis for a confident decision.
I suspect just changing the threshold (especially as a new universal threshold, rather than related to the nature of the experiment) wouldn't even strike the authors as an improvement.
> Third, like the 0.05 threshold from which it came, the default 95% used to compute intervals is itself an arbitrary convention. It is based on the false idea that there is a 95% chance that the computed interval itself contains the true value, coupled with the vague feeling that this is a basis for a confident decision.