Phil Stat Wars (virtual) Forum: D. Mayo

Event

January 7, 11 am - 12:30 pm (New York, ET), Phil Stat Wars monthly (virtual) Forum meeting

1/7/2021

online

D. Mayo (Virginia Tech): Putting the Brakes on the Breakthrough, or "How I used simple logic to uncover a flaw in a controversial 60-year old theorem in statistical foundations" ABSTRACT: An essential component of inference based on familiar frequentist (error statistical) notions p-values, statistical significance and confidence levels, is the relevant sampling distribution (hence the term sampling theory). This results in violations of a principle known as the strong likelihood principle (SLP), or just the likelihood principle (LP), which says, in effect, that outcomes other than those observed are irrelevant for inferences within a statistical model. Now Allan Birnbaum was a frequentist (error statistician), but he found himself in a predicament: He seemed to have shown that the LP follows from uncontroversial frequentist principles! Bayesians, such as Savage, heralded his result as a breakthrough in statistics! But there's a flaw in the proof, and that's what I aim to show in my presentation by means of 3 simple examples: Example 1: Trying and Trying Again Example 2: Two instruments with different precisions (you shouldn't get credit/blame for something you didn't do) The Breakthrough: Don't Birnbaumize that data my friend As in the last 9 years, I will post an imaginary dialogue with Allan Birnbaum at the stroke of midnight, New Year's Eve, on errorstatistics.com, and this will be relevant for the talk. For background readings, and information on how to join our virtual forum, see the Phil Stat Wars website below.

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1/7/2021