Related papers: Design and interpretation of studies: relevant con…

Purpose: In the tradition of Spencer Brown's (1969) Laws of Form, observation was defined in Luhmann's (1984) social systems theory as the designation of a distinction. In the sociological design, however, the designation specifies only a…

We review typical design problems encountered in the planning of observational studies and propose a unifying framework that allows us to use the same concepts and notation for different problems. In the framework, the design is defined as…

Confounder selection is perhaps the most important step in the design of observational studies. A number of criteria, often with different objectives and approaches, have been proposed, and their validity and practical value have been…

We examine the role of textual data as study units when conducting causal inference by drawing parallels between human subjects and organized texts. %in human population research. We elaborate on key causal concepts and principles, and…

The last decade has witnessed a number of important and exciting developments that had been achieved for improving recurrence plot based data analysis and to widen its application potential. We will give a brief overview about important and…

When estimating causal effects using observational data, it is desirable to replicate a randomized experiment as closely as possible by obtaining treated and control groups with similar covariate distributions. This goal can often be…

In this article, an overview of the background, the research approaches and the patterns of practice in the field of collaborative learning are provided. A definition of collaborative learning and an overview of fundamental aspects that…

A didactical survey of the foundations of Algorithmic Information Theory. These notes are short on motivation, history and background but introduce some of the main techniques and concepts of the field. The "manuscript" has been evolving…

The study of associations and their causal explanations is a central research activity whose methodology varies tremendously across fields. Even within specialized subfields, comparisons across textbooks and journals reveals that the basics…

The causal assumptions, the study design and the data are the elements required for scientific inference in empirical research. The research is adequately communicated only if all of these elements and their relations are described…

Observational studies often benefit from an abundance of observational units. This can lead to studies that -- while challenged by issues of internal validity -- have inferences derived from sample sizes substantially larger than randomized…

A number of topics in analysis are discussed, with emphasis on basic principles. There is some overlap with "Elements of linear and real analysis" (arXiv:math/0108030), with numerous changes in content and presentation since then.

The perception-related origins of physical measures and standards are considered within the framework of the general observer theory. The impact of observer characteristics on the development of observer-centric physics, physical concepts…

Ordinal time series analysis is based on the idea to map time series to ordinal patterns, i.e., order relations between the values of a time series and not the values themselves, as introduced in 2002 by C. Bandt and B. Pompe. Despite a…

We give a survey of the foundations of statistical queries and their many applications to other areas. We introduce the model, give the main definitions, and we explore the fundamental theory statistical queries and how how it connects to…

For obtaining causal inferences that are objective, and therefore have the best chance of revealing scientific truths, carefully designed and executed randomized experiments are generally considered to be the gold standard. Observational…

Case-control designs are an important tool in contrasting the effects of well-defined treatments. In this paper, we reconsider classical concepts, assumptions and principles and explore when the results of case-control studies can be…

The use of historical estimates in current studies is common in a wide variety of application areas. Nevertheless, despite their routine use the uncertainty associated with historical estimates is rarely properly accounted for in the…

The purpose of this note is to explain what is "analytical history", a modular and testable analysis of historical events introduced in a book published in 2002 (Roehner and Syme 2002). Broadly speaking, it is a comparative methodology for…

The data science revolution has led to an increased interest in the practice of data analysis. While much has been written about statistical thinking, a complementary form of thinking that appears in the practice of data analysis is design…