The Cult of Statistical Significance

16 Dec. 2009

The book opens by exploring two distinct sides of statistics and then argues that too much science uses only one side. For example, he says statistics are a sophisticated counting tool which lets you answer two questions: 1) whether or not something exists and, 2) how much. With both of these, you can determine how much of an impact something has. If you only ask the first question, you are going to be chasing false positives. It is vital to understand how to determine if something is strongly true. A degree of magnitude is considered, instead of the black and white; yes or no.

I have made examples like this before that I found useful. Consider a regular six-sided die. Am I going to roll a 1? Yes or no. Choose one or choose the other. It’s just one out of two. But wait… There’s five other faces. The chances of rolling a 1 are 1 out of 6.

In a political context, to only ask whether or not something exists is to completely negate any compromise of ideas because it forces a dichotomy on the thinker.

Do you support miscellaneous issue that probably doesn’t actually affect you?

YES or NO?