English

I can see clearly now: reinterpreting statistical significance

Other Statistics 2018-10-16 v1

Abstract

Null hypothesis significance testing remains popular despite decades of concern about misuse and misinterpretation. We believe that much of the problem is due to language: significance testing has little to do with other meanings of the word "significance". Despite the limitations of null-hypothesis tests, we argue here that they remain useful in many contexts as a guide to whether a certain effect can be seen clearly in that context (e.g. whether we can clearly see that a correlation or between-group difference is positive or negative). We therefore suggest that researchers describe the conclusions of null-hypothesis tests in terms of statistical "clarity" rather than statistical "significance". This simple semantic change could substantially enhance clarity in statistical communication.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1810.06387,
  title  = {I can see clearly now: reinterpreting statistical significance},
  author = {Jonathan Dushoff and Morgan P. Kain and Benjamin M. Bolker},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.06387},
  year   = {2018}
}

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11 Pages, 1 Table, 0 Figures