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The notion of p-value is a fundamental concept in statistical inference and has been widely used for reporting outcomes of hypothesis tests. However, p-value is often misinterpreted, misused or miscommunicated in practice. Part of the issue…
Particle physics experiments rely on the (generalised) likelihood ratio test (LRT) for searches and measurements, which consist of composite hypothesis tests. However, this test is not guaranteed to be optimal, as the Neyman-Pearson lemma…
Much of science is (rightly or wrongly) driven by hypothesis testing. Even in situations where the hypothesis testing paradigm is correct, the common practice of basing inferences solely on p-values has been under intense criticism for over…
Hypothesis testing plays a central role in statistical inference, and is used in many settings where privacy concerns are paramount. This work answers a basic question about privately testing simple hypotheses: given two distributions $P$…
This paper illustrates the central role of loss functions in data-driven decision making, providing a comprehensive survey on their influence in cost-sensitive classification (CSC) and reinforcement learning (RL). We demonstrate how…
Items in a test are often used as a basis for making decisions and such tests are therefore required to have good psychometric properties, like unidimensionality. In many cases the sum score is used in combination with a threshold to decide…
Increased availability of data and accessibility of computational tools in recent years have created unprecedented opportunities for scientific research driven by statistical analysis. Inherent limitations of statistics impose constrains on…
Binary hypothesis testing under the Neyman-Pearson formalism is a statistical inference framework for distinguishing data generated by two different source distributions. Privacy restrictions may require the curator of the data or the data…
Pseudo-Labeling is a simple and effective approach to semi-supervised learning. It requires criteria that guide the selection of pseudo-labeled data. The latter have been shown to crucially affect pseudo-labeling's generalization…
Empirical research in Natural Language Processing (NLP) has adopted a narrow set of principles for assessing hypotheses, relying mainly on p-value computation, which suffers from several known issues. While alternative proposals have been…
We initiate an investigation of learning tasks in a setting where the learner is given access to two competing provers, only one of which is honest. Specifically, we consider the power of such learners in assessing purported properties of…
Null hypothesis statistical significance testing (NHST) is the dominant approach for evaluating results from randomized controlled trials. Whereas NHST comes with long-run error rate guarantees, its main inferential tool -- the $p$-value --…
In contrast to its common definition and calculation, interpretation of p-values diverges among statisticians. Since p-value is the basis of various methodologies, this divergence has led to a variety of test methodologies and evaluations…
Since its debut in the 18th century, the P-value has been an important part of hypothesis testing-based scientific discoveries. As the statistical engine accelerates, questions are beginning to be raised, asking to what extent scientific…
Best-of-n sampling improves the accuracy of large language models (LLMs) and large reasoning models (LRMs) by generating multiple candidate solutions and selecting the one with the highest reward. The key challenge for reasoning tasks is…
Researchers faced with a sequence of candidate model specifications must often choose the best specification that does not violate a testable identification assumption. One option in this scenario is sequential specification tests:…
This paper develops an interpretive framework for divergence P-values and S-values within a descriptive frequentist perspective. Statistical analysis is framed as operating within idealized worlds defined by a set of assumptions and a…
Hypothesis testing results often rely on simple, yet important assumptions about the behaviour of the distribution of p-values under the null and the alternative. We examine tests for one dimensional parameters of interest that converge to…
An important question that often arises in the operation of networked systems is whether to collect the real-time data or to estimate them based on the previously collected data. Various factors should be taken into account such as how…
P-values are a mainstay in statistics but are often misinterpreted. We propose a new interpretation of p-value as a meaningful plausibility, where this is to be interpreted formally within the inferential model framework. We show that, for…