Related papers: On locating statistics in the world of finding out
There are various approaches to the problem of how one is supposed to conduct a statistical analysis. Different analyses can lead to contradictory conclusions in some problems so this is not a satisfactory state of affairs. It seems that…
We discuss the paper "Citation Statistics" by the Joint Committee on Quantitative Assessment of Research [arXiv:0910.3529]. In particular, we focus on a necessary feature of "good" measures for ranking scientific authors: that good measures…
The problem of identifying to which of a given set of classes objects belong is ubiquitous, occurring in many research domains and application areas, including medical diagnosis, financial decision making, online commerce, and national…
This paper lays out the current landscape of tools used in statistics education. In particular, it considers graphing calculators, spreadsheets, applets and microworlds, standalone educational software, statistical programming tools, tools…
Creating test collections for offline retrieval evaluation requires human effort to judge documents' relevance. This expensive activity motivated much work in developing methods for constructing benchmarks with fewer assessment costs. In…
Researchers, editors, educators and publishers need to understand the mix of research methods used in their field to guide decision making, with a current concern being that qualitative research is threatened by big data. Although there…
Comparisons of different treatments or production processes are the goals of a significant fraction of applied research. Unsurprisingly, two-sample problems play a main role in Statistics through natural questions such as `Is the the new…
Differentially private statistical estimation has seen a flurry of developments over the last several years. Study has been divided into two schools of thought, focusing on empirical statistics versus population statistics. We suggest that…
Since the problem: "What is statistics?" is most fundamental in sceince, in order to solve this problem, there is every reason to believe that we have to start from the proposal of a worldview. Recently we proposed measurement theory (i.e.,…
Think-aloud interviews have been a valuable but underused tool in statistics education research. Think-alouds, in which students narrate their reasoning in real time while solving problems, differ in important ways from other types of…
This book chapter attempts to counter anxieties in the humanities and social science about the role of big data in research by focusing on approaches which, by being firmly grounded in the traditional values of disciplines, enhance existing…
Every scientific endeavour consists of (at least) two components: A hypothesis on the one hand and data on the other. There is always a more or less abstract level - some theory, a set of concepts, certain relations of ideas - and a…
Textbooks on statistics emphasize care and precision, via concepts such as reliability and validity in measurement, random sampling and treatment assignment in data collection, and causal identification and bias in estimation. But how do…
We describe a statistical hypothesis test for the presence of a signal. The test allows the researcher to fix the signal location and/or width a priori, or perform a search to find the signal region that maximizes the signal. The background…
The rapid emergence of massive datasets in various fields poses a serious challenge to traditional statistical methods. Meanwhile, it provides opportunities for researchers to develop novel algorithms. Inspired by the idea of…
A case is made that researchers are interested in studying processes. Often the inferences they are interested in making are about the process and its associated population. On other occasions, a researcher may be interested in making an…
The research on and application of artificial intelligence (AI) has triggered a comprehensive scientific, economic, social and political discussion. Here we argue that statistics, as an interdisciplinary scientific field, plays a…
The task of expert finding has been getting increasing attention in information retrieval literature. However, the current state-of-the-art is still lacking in principled approaches for combining different sources of evidence in an optimal…
The exponentially growing number of scientific papers stimulates a discussion on the interplay between quantity and quality in science. In particular, one may wonder which publication strategy may offer more chances of success: publishing…
An empirical study is conducted to compare citations per publication, statistics and observed Hirsch indexes between subject fields using summary statistics of countries. No distributional assumptions are made and ratios are calculated.…