[Solved] S670 Problem set 1

Write a three-paragraph essay on the following topic: In general, should studies published in academic journals use P-values? Your essay may be for the use of P-values, against the of use of P-values, or it might argue that it depends.

Your essay should be about a page, and have the following structure:

• Paragraph 1: Explain why the use of P-value-based statistical significance for decisionmaking has become controversial in recent years.
• Paragraph 2 (the long one): Find ONE real-life study in which P-values are used. What is the studys argument, and are the P-values important to it? Do the P-values distract from more important things? Do the P-values show theyre supposed to show? If not, why not?
• Paragraph 3: Make a conclusion, and justify it. If you dont think P-values should be used, suggest what kinds of statistical analysis should be used instead.

Why are we making you do this? We want you to think about how you might use the

EDA techniques youll learn in this courseshould they be used instead of confirmatory statistical methods, or should they be used in conjunction with them? More practically, this course requires writing reports, and some of you may not have written anything long in a long time, so itll be good to get some practice for somewhat low stakes.

Much more further reading than you want

• American Statistical Association statement on p-values. Press release: https://www.nature. com/articles/d41586-019-00857-9; full statement: https://amstat.tandfonline.com/ doi/full/10.1080/00031305.2016.1154108
• Amrhein et al., Scientists rise up against statistical significance: https://www.nature. com/articles/d41586-019-00857-9
• All of Andrew Gelmans blog: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/

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