Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better

Re:Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better by civilized on Sunday August 23, 2020 @12:08AM (#24249438)

All but the simplest statistical estimators have researcher degrees of freedom (certainly including multilevel models) so it seems arbitrary to criticize the trimmed mean in particular for that "fault".

Similarly, any estimator can be biased if its assumptions are violated, so I'm not sure why the potential bias of the trimmed mean in particular is an interesting point.

I'm sure that social science peer reviewers have their reasons for their methodological preferences, but trimmed means are great workhorses in other areas of science, like signal processing.

The critique strikes me as potentially valid in its subfield but a bit parochial if it is attempting generality.

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Re:Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better by chalst on Sunday August 23, 2020 @05:28AM (#24250728)

I don't deny the technique has its uses. The point is it is a poor technique to use if your goal is hypothesis testing, which, as I said, is what most statisticians care about.

I didn't reply to you, but to goodsector, who claimed that statisticians cared focus on efficiency at the expense of reliability. I dispute this.

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Re:Efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better by civilized on Sunday August 23, 2020 @08:51AM (#24251543)

I agree! Statisticians have largely led the development of robust methods, so I don't see how they can be characterized as ignoring the concern.

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