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Southworth Det Eclips Binary Catalog
Hi,
On 2014-01-24 07:57:33 +0000, Robert L. Oldershaw said: I think your post is a very nice example of the point I was making, which, if you will remember, was: "Funny how something at the 2-sigma level can be of great interest or of no interest depending on point of view and expectations." When the data are chosen from the point of view of being of great interest, then they are of no interest. -- Cheers! Dan Nagle |
#62
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Southworth Det Eclips Binary Catalog
In article , Dan Nagle
writes: I think your post is a very nice example of the point I was making, which, if you will remember, was: "Funny how something at the 2-sigma level can be of great interest or of no interest depending on point of view and expectations." When the data are chosen from the point of view of being of great interest, then they are of no interest. I think this is the main point. Certainly no-one will claim a detection from a 2-sigma result. The difference is that they set up their experiment, took their data, and reported a 2-sigma result. This is more significant than choosing the data BECAUSE they show a 2-sigma result. Even a 5-sigma result would be useless if you looked at a huge number of possible data sets and chose the one which has a 5-sigma result. If you choose a person and this person then wins the lottery, then that is a significant result. Suppose that a psychic says that he can predict the lottery, he predicts that a certain person will win, and indeed that person wins. That would be strong evidence that he really does have psychic powers. But consider that someone wins the lottery every week. A news reporter who then visits the lottery winner and pitches his report as a report about an extremely improbable event doesn't have a good command of statistics. |
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