gwern comments on Value of Information: 8 examples - Less Wrong

48 Post author: gwern 18 May 2012 11:45PM

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Comment author: gwern 19 May 2012 06:46:36PM 4 points [-]

Thanks for the comments.

In the case where you get "W", you update and P(W|"W")=99% and you continue taking melatonin. But in the case where you get "~W", you update and P(W|"~W")=17%. Given the massive RoI you calculated for melatonin, it sounds like it's worth taking even if there's only a 17% chance that it's actually effective.

The Bayes calculation is (0.05 * 0.8) / ((0.05 * 0.8) + (0.95 * 0.2)) = 0.1739..., right? (A second experiment would knock it down to ~0.01, apparently.)

I didn't notice that. I didn't realize I was making an assumption that on a negative experimental result, I'd immediately stop buying whatever. Now I suddenly remember the Wikipedia article talking about iterating... After I get one experimental result, I need to redo the expected-value calculation, and re-run the VoI on further experiments; sigh I guess I'd better reword the melatonin section and add a footnote to the master version explaining this!

A brief terminology correction: the "value of perfect information" would be $41, not $205 (i.e. it includes the 20% estimate that melatonin doesn't work). If you replace that with "value of a perfect negative result" you should be fine.

I'll reword that.

I'll need to think about the Adderall point.

Comment author: Vaniver 19 May 2012 09:26:10PM *  2 points [-]

Thanks for the comments.

You're welcome!

The Bayes calculation is ..., right?

That's how I did it.

It's also possible that P(W|"~W") is way lower than .05, and so the test could be better than that calculation makes it look. This is something you can figure out from basic stats and your experimental design, and I strongly recommend actually running the numbers. Psychology for years has been plagued with studies that are too small to actually provide valuable information, as people in general aren't good intuitive statisticians.

Comment author: gwern 19 May 2012 10:05:55PM *  1 point [-]

This is something you can figure out from basic stats and your experimental design, and I strongly recommend actually running the numbers.

As it happens, I learned how to do basic power calculations not that long ago. I didn't do an explicit calculation for the melatonin trial because I didn't randomize selection, instead doing an alternating days design and not always following that, so I thought why bother doing one in retrospect?

But if we were to wave that away, the power seems fine. I have something like 141 days of data, of which around 90-100 is usable, giving me maybe <50 pairs? If I fire up R and load in the two means and the standard deviation (which I had left over from calculating the effect size), and then play with the numbers, then to get an 85% chance I could find an effect at p=0.01:

> pwr.t.test(d=(456.4783 - 407.5312) / 131.4656,power=0.85,sig.level=0.01,type="paired",alternative="greater")
Paired t test power calculation n = 84.3067
d = 0.3723187
sig.level = 0.01
power = 0.85
alternative = greater
NOTE: n is number of *pairs*

If I drop the p=0.01 for 0.05, it looks like I should have had a good shot at detecting the effect:

> pwr.t.test(d=(456.4783 - 407.5312) / 131.4656,power=0.85,sig.level=0.05,type="paired",alternative="greater")
Paired t test power calculation n = 53.24355

So, it's not great, but it's at least not terribly wrong?

EDIT: Just realized that I equivocated over days vs pairs in my existing power analyses; 1 was wrong, but I apparently avoided the error in another, phew.

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