AShepard comments on Why We Can't Take Expected Value Estimates Literally (Even When They're Unbiased) - Less Wrong

75 Post author: HoldenKarnofsky 18 August 2011 11:34PM

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Comment author: AShepard 19 August 2011 06:01:22AM 6 points [-]

but because it is the standard value, you can be more confident that they didn't "shop around" for the p value that was most convenient for the argument they wanted to make. It's the same reason people like to see quarterly data for a company's performance - if a company is trying to raise capital and reports its earnings for the period "January 6 - April 12", you can bet that there were big expenses on January 5 and April 13 that they'd rather not include. This is much less of a worry if they are using standard accounting periods.

Comment author: michaelsullivan 19 August 2011 10:21:54PM 1 point [-]

It's still a pretty significant worry. If you know that some fiscal quarter or year will be used to qualify you for something important, it is often possible to arrange for key revenue and expenses to move around the boundaries to suit what you wish to portray in your report.

Comment author: wnoise 19 August 2011 07:34:17AM 1 point [-]

That's true. Arbitrary means different things, from "not chosen by nature", to "not chosen by an outside standard".

Comment author: AShepard 19 August 2011 01:30:13PM 2 points [-]

I think if we tabooed (taboo'd?) "arbitrary", we would all find ourselves in agreement about our actual predictions.

Comment author: khafra 19 August 2011 12:24:45PM 2 points [-]

In this case, the fact that it evidently was chosen to conform to scientific culture, and not for some ulterior motive, is bayesian evidence in favor of the validity of the frequentist methodology.