John_Thacker comments on Outside the Laboratory - Less Wrong

63 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 January 2007 03:46AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (336)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: John_Thacker 22 January 2007 07:03:31PM 6 points [-]

Probability theory still applies.

Ah, but which probability theory? Bayesian or frequentist? Or the ideas of Fisher?

How do you feel about the likelihood principle? The Behrens-Fisher problem, particularly when the variances are unknown and not assumed to be equal? The test of a sharp (or point) null hypothesis?

It does no good to assume that one's statistics and probability theory are not built on axioms themselves. I have rarely met a probabilist or statistician whose answer about whether he or she believes in the likelihood principle or in the logically contradicted significance tests (or in various solutions of the Behrens-Fisher problem) does not depend on some sort of axiom or idea of what simply "seems right." Of course, there are plenty of scientists who use mutually contradictory statistical tests, depending on what they're doing.