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: 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.