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p-value

In null-hypothesis significance testing, the -value[note 1] is the probability of obtaining test results at least as extreme as the result actually observed, under the assumption that the null hypothesis is correct.[2][3] A very small p-value means that such an extreme observed outcome would be very unlikely under the null hypothesis. Even though reporting p-values of statistical tests is common practice in academic publications of many quantitative fields, misinterpretation and misuse of p-values is widespread and has been a major topic in mathematics and metascience.[4][5] In 2016, the American Statistical Association (ASA) made a formal statement that "p-values do not measure the probability that the studied hypothesis is true, or the probability that the data were produced by random chance alone" and that "a p-value, or statistical significance, does not measure the size of an effect or the importance of a result" or "evidence regarding a model or hypothesis".[6] That said, a 2019 task force by ASA has issued a statement on statistical significance and replicability, concluding with: "p-values and significance tests, when properly applied and interpreted, increase the rigor of the conclusions drawn from data".[7]

Basic concepts edit

In statistics, every conjecture concerning the unknown probability distribution of a collection of random variables representing the observed data   in some study is called a statistical hypothesis. If we state one hypothesis only and the aim of the statistical test is to see whether this hypothesis is tenable , but not to investigate other specific hypotheses, then such a test is called a null hypothesis test.

As our statistical hypothesis will, by definition, state some property of the distribution, the null hypothesis is the default hypothesis under which that property does not exist. The null hypothesis is typically that some parameter (such as a correlation or a difference between means) in the populations of interest is zero. Our hypothesis might specify the probability distribution of   precisely, or it might only specify that it belongs to some class of distributions. Often, we reduce the data to a single numerical statistic, e.g.,  , whose marginal probability distribution is closely connected to a main question of interest in the study.

The p-value is used in the context of null hypothesis testing in order to quantify the statistical significance of a result, the result being the observed value of the chosen statistic  .[note 2] The lower the p-value is, the lower the probability of getting that result if the null hypothesis were true. A result is said to be statistically significant if it allows us to reject the null hypothesis. All other things being equal, smaller p-values are taken as stronger evidence against the null hypothesis.

Loosely speaking, rejection of the null hypothesis implies that there is sufficient evidence against it.

As a particular example, if a null hypothesis states that a certain summary statistic   follows the standard normal distribution   then the rejection of this null hypothesis could mean that (i) the mean of   is not 0, or (ii) the variance of   is not 1, or (iii)   is not normally distributed. Different tests of the same null hypothesis would be more or less sensitive to different alternatives. However, even if we do manage to reject the null hypothesis for all 3 alternatives, and even if we know that the distribution is normal and variance is 1, the null hypothesis test does not tell us which non-zero values of the mean are now most plausible. The more independent observations from the same probability distribution one has, the more accurate the test will be, and the higher the precision with which one will be able to determine the mean value and show that it is not equal to zero; but this will also increase the importance of evaluating the real-world or scientific relevance of this deviation.

Definition and interpretation edit

Definition edit

The p-value is the probability under the null hypothesis of obtaining a real-valued test statistic at least as extreme as the one obtained. Consider an observed test-statistic   from unknown distribution  . Then the p-value   is what the prior probability would be of observing a test-statistic value at least as "extreme" as   if null hypothesis   were true. That is:

  •   for a one-sided right-tail test-statistic distribution.
  •   for a one-sided left-tail test-statistic distribution.
  •   for a two-sided test-statistic distribution. If the distribution of   is symmetric about zero, then  

Interpretations edit

The error that a practising statistician would consider the more important to avoid (which is a subjective judgment) is called the error of the first kind. The first demand of the mathematical theory is to deduce such test criteria as would ensure that the probability of committing an error of the first kind would equal (or approximately equal, or not exceed) a preassigned number α, such as α = 0.05 or 0.01, etc. This number is called the level of significance.

— Jerzy Neyman, "The Emergence of Mathematical Statistics"[8]

In a significance test, the null hypothesis   is rejected if the p-value is less than or equal to a predefined threshold value  , which is referred to as the alpha level or significance level.   is not derived from the data, but rather is set by the researcher before examining the data.   is commonly set to 0.05, though lower alpha levels are sometimes used. In 2018, a group of statisticians led by Daniel Benjamin proposed the adoption of the 0.005 value as standard value for statistical significance worldwide.[9]

Different p-values based on independent sets of data can be combined, for instance using Fisher's combined probability test.

Distribution edit

The p-value is a function of the chosen test statistic   and is therefore a random variable. If the null hypothesis fixes the probability distribution of   precisely (e.g.   where   is the only parameter), and if that distribution is continuous, then when the null-hypothesis is true, the p-value is uniformly distributed between 0 and 1. Regardless of the truth of the  , the p-value is not fixed; if the same test is repeated independently with fresh data, one will typically obtain a different p-value in each iteration.

Usually only a single p-value relating to a hypothesis is observed, so the p-value is interpreted by a significance test, and no effort is made to estimate the distribution it was drawn from. When a collection of p-values are available (e.g. when considering a group of studies on the same subject), the distribution of p-values is sometimes called a p-curve.[10] A p-curve can be used to assess the reliability of scientific literature, such as by detecting publication bias or p-hacking. [10][11]

Distribution for composite hypothesis edit

In parametric hypothesis testing problems, a simple or point hypothesis refers to a hypothesis where the parameter's value is assumed to be a single number. In contrast, in a composite hypothesis the parameter's value is given by a set of numbers. When the null-hypothesis is composite (or the distribution of the statistic is discrete), then when the null-hypothesis is true the probability of obtaining a p-value less than or equal to any number between 0 and 1 is still less than or equal to that number. In other words, it remains the case that very small values are relatively unlikely if the null-hypothesis is true, and that a significance test at level   is obtained by rejecting the null-hypothesis if the p-value is less than or equal to  .[12][13]

For example, when testing the null hypothesis that a distribution is normal with a mean less than or equal to zero against the alternative that the mean is greater than zero ( , variance known), the null hypothesis does not specify the exact probability distribution of the appropriate test statistic. In this example that would be the Z-statistic belonging to the one-sided one-sample Z-test. For each possible value of the theoretical mean, the Z-test statistic has a different probability distribution. In these circumstances the p-value is defined by taking the least favorable null-hypothesis case, which is typically on the border between null and alternative. This definition ensures the complementarity of p-values and alpha-levels:   means one only rejects the null hypothesis if the p-value is less than or equal to  , and the hypothesis test will indeed have a maximum type-1 error rate of  .

Usage edit

The p-value is widely used in statistical hypothesis testing, specifically in null hypothesis significance testing. In this method, before conducting the study, one first chooses a model (the null hypothesis) and the alpha level α (most commonly 0.05). After analyzing the data, if the p-value is less than α, that is taken to mean that the observed data is sufficiently inconsistent with the null hypothesis for the null hypothesis to be rejected. However, that does not prove that the null hypothesis is false. The p-value does not, in itself, establish probabilities of hypotheses. Rather, it is a tool for deciding whether to reject the null hypothesis.[14]

Misuse edit

According to the ASA, there is widespread agreement that p-values are often misused and misinterpreted.[3] One practice that has been particularly criticized is accepting the alternative hypothesis for any p-value nominally less than 0.05 without other supporting evidence. Although p-values are helpful in assessing how incompatible the data are with a specified statistical model, contextual factors must also be considered, such as "the design of a study, the quality of the measurements, the external evidence for the phenomenon under study, and the validity of assumptions that underlie the data analysis".[3] Another concern is that the p-value is often misunderstood as being the probability that the null hypothesis is true.[3][15]

Some statisticians have proposed abandoning p-values and focusing more on other inferential statistics,[3] such as confidence intervals,[16][17] likelihood ratios,[18][19] or Bayes factors,[20][21][22] but there is heated debate on the feasibility of these alternatives.[23][24] Others have suggested to remove fixed significance thresholds and to interpret p-values as continuous indices of the strength of evidence against the null hypothesis.[25][26] Yet others suggested to report alongside p-values the prior probability of a real effect that would be required to obtain a false positive risk (i.e. the probability that there is no real effect) below a pre-specified threshold (e.g. 5%).[27]

That said, in 2019 a task force by ASA had convened to consider the use of statistical methods in scientific studies, specifically hypothesis tests and p-values, and their connection to replicability.[7] It states that "Different measures of uncertainty can complement one another; no single measure serves all purposes", citing p-value as one of these measures. They also stress that p-values can provide valuable information when considering the specific value as well as when compared to some threshold. In general, it stresses that "p-values and significance tests, when properly applied and interpreted, increase the rigor of the conclusions drawn from data".

Calculation edit

Usually,   is a test statistic. A test statistic is the output of a scalar function of all the observations. This statistic provides a single number, such as a t-statistic or an F-statistic. As such, the test statistic follows a distribution determined by the function used to define that test statistic and the distribution of the input observational data.

For the important case in which the data are hypothesized to be a random sample from a normal distribution, depending on the nature of the test statistic and the hypotheses of interest about its distribution, different null hypothesis tests have been developed. Some such tests are the z-test for hypotheses concerning the mean of a normal distribution with known variance, the t-test based on Student's t-distribution of a suitable statistic for hypotheses concerning the mean of a normal distribution when the variance is unknown, the F-test based on the F-distribution of yet another statistic for hypotheses concerning the variance. For data of other nature, for instance, categorical (discrete) data, test statistics might be constructed whose null hypothesis distribution is based on normal approximations to appropriate statistics obtained by invoking the central limit theorem for large samples, as in the case of Pearson's chi-squared test.

Thus computing a p-value requires a null hypothesis, a test statistic (together with deciding whether the researcher is performing a one-tailed test or a two-tailed test), and data. Even though computing the test statistic on given data may be easy, computing the sampling distribution under the null hypothesis, and then computing its cumulative distribution function (CDF) is often a difficult problem. Today, this computation is done using statistical software, often via numeric methods (rather than exact formulae), but, in the early and mid 20th century, this was instead done via tables of values, and one interpolated or extrapolated p-values from these discrete values[citation needed]. Rather than using a table of p-values, Fisher instead inverted the CDF, publishing a list of values of the test statistic for given fixed p-values; this corresponds to computing the quantile function (inverse CDF).

Example edit

Testing the fairness of a coin edit

As an example of a statistical test, an experiment is performed to determine whether a coin flip is fair (equal chance of landing heads or tails) or unfairly biased (one outcome being more likely than the other).

Suppose that the experimental results show the coin turning up heads 14 times out of 20 total flips. The full data   would be a sequence of twenty times the symbol "H" or "T". The statistic on which one might focus could be the total number   of heads. The null hypothesis is that the coin is fair, and coin tosses are independent of one another. If a right-tailed test is considered, which would be the case if one is actually interested in the possibility that the coin is biased towards falling heads, then the p-value of this result is the chance of a fair coin landing on heads at least 14 times out of 20 flips. That probability can be computed from binomial coefficients as

 

This probability is the p-value, considering only extreme results that favor heads. This is called a one-tailed test. However, one might be interested in deviations in either direction, favoring either heads or tails. The two-tailed p-value, which considers deviations favoring either heads or tails, may instead be calculated. As the binomial distribution is symmetrical for a fair coin, the two-sided p-value is simply twice the above calculated single-sided p-value: the two-sided p-value is 0.115.

In the above example:

  • Null hypothesis (H0): The coin is fair, with Pr(heads) = 0.5.
  • Test statistic: Number of heads.
  • Alpha level (designated threshold of significance): 0.05.
  • Observation O: 14 heads out of 20 flips.
  • Two-tailed p-value of observation O given H0 = 2 × min(Pr(no. of heads ≥ 14 heads), Pr(no. of heads ≤ 14 heads)) = 2 × min(0.058, 0.978) = 2 × 0.058 = 0.115.

The Pr(no. of heads ≤ 14 heads) = 1 − Pr(no. of heads ≥ 14 heads) + Pr(no. of head = 14) = 1 − 0.058 + 0.036 = 0.978; however, the symmetry of this binomial distribution makes it an unnecessary computation to find the smaller of the two probabilities. Here, the calculated p-value exceeds 0.05, meaning that the data falls within the range of what would happen 95% of the time, if the coin were fair. Hence, the null hypothesis is not rejected at the 0.05 level.

However, had one more head been obtained, the resulting p-value (two-tailed) would have been 0.0414 (4.14%), in which case the null hypothesis would be rejected at the 0.05 level.

Multistage experiment design edit

The difference between the two meanings of "extreme" appear when we consider a multistage experiment for testing the fairness of the coin. Suppose we design the experiment as follows:

  • Flip the coin twice. If both comes up heads or tails, end the experiment.
  • Else, flip the coin 4 more times.

This experiment has 7 types of outcomes: 2 heads, 2 tails, 5 heads 1 tail, ..., 1 head 5 tails. We now calculate the p-value of the "3 heads 3 tails" outcome.

If we use the test statistic  , then under the null hypothesis is exactly 1 for two-sided p-value, and exactly   for one-sided left-tail p-value, and same for one-sided right-tail p-value.

If we consider every outcome that has equal or lower probability than "3 heads 3 tails" as "at least as extreme", then the p-value is exactly  

However, suppose we have planned to simply flip the coin 6 times no matter what happens, then the second definition of p-value would mean that the p-value of "3 heads 3 tails" is exactly 1.

Thus, the "at least as extreme" definition of p-value is deeply contextual and depends on what the experimenter planned to do even in situations that did not occur.

History edit

 
John Arbuthnot
 
Pierre-Simon Laplace
 
Karl Pearson
 
Ronald Fisher

P-value computations date back to the 1700s, where they were computed for the human sex ratio at birth, and used to compute statistical significance compared to the null hypothesis of equal probability of male and female births.[28] John Arbuthnot studied this question in 1710,[29][30][31][32] and examined birth records in London for each of the 82 years from 1629 to 1710. In every year, the number of males born in London exceeded the number of females. Considering more male or more female births as equally likely, the probability of the observed outcome is 1/282, or about 1 in 4,836,000,000,000,000,000,000,000; in modern terms, the p-value. This is vanishingly small, leading Arbuthnot that this was not due to chance, but to divine providence: "From whence it follows, that it is Art, not Chance, that governs." In modern terms, he rejected the null hypothesis of equally likely male and female births at the p = 1/282 significance level. This and other work by Arbuthnot is credited as "… the first use of significance tests …"[33] the first example of reasoning about statistical significance,[34] and "… perhaps the first published report of a nonparametric test …",[30] specifically the sign test; see details at Sign test § History.

The same question was later addressed by Pierre-Simon Laplace, who instead used a parametric test, modeling the number of male births with a binomial distribution:[35]

In the 1770s Laplace considered the statistics of almost half a million births. The statistics showed an excess of boys compared to girls. He concluded by calculation of a p-value that the excess was a real, but unexplained, effect.

The p-value was first formally introduced by Karl Pearson, in his Pearson's chi-squared test,[36] using the chi-squared distribution and notated as capital P.[36] The p-values for the chi-squared distribution (for various values of χ2 and degrees of freedom), now notated as P, were calculated in (Elderton 1902), collected in (Pearson 1914, pp. xxxi–xxxiii, 26–28, Table XII).

The use of the p-value in statistics was popularized by Ronald Fisher,[37][full citation needed] and it plays a central role in his approach to the subject.[38] In his influential book Statistical Methods for Research Workers (1925), Fisher proposed the level p = 0.05, or a 1 in 20 chance of being exceeded by chance, as a limit for statistical significance, and applied this to a normal distribution (as a two-tailed test), thus yielding the rule of two standard deviations (on a normal distribution) for statistical significance (see 68–95–99.7 rule).[39][note 3][40]

He then computed a table of values, similar to Elderton but, importantly, reversed the roles of χ2 and p. That is, rather than computing p for different values of χ2 (and degrees of freedom n), he computed values of χ2 that yield specified p-values, specifically 0.99, 0.98, 0.95, 0,90, 0.80, 0.70, 0.50, 0.30, 0.20, 0.10, 0.05, 0.02, and 0.01.[41] That allowed computed values of χ2 to be compared against cutoffs and encouraged the use of p-values (especially 0.05, 0.02, and 0.01) as cutoffs, instead of computing and reporting p-values themselves. The same type of tables were then compiled in (Fisher & Yates 1938), which cemented the approach.[40]

As an illustration of the application of p-values to the design and interpretation of experiments, in his following book The Design of Experiments (1935), Fisher presented the lady tasting tea experiment,[42] which is the archetypal example of the p-value.

To evaluate a lady's claim that she (Muriel Bristol) could distinguish by taste how tea is prepared (first adding the milk to the cup, then the tea, or first tea, then milk), she was sequentially presented with 8 cups: 4 prepared one way, 4 prepared the other, and asked to determine the preparation of each cup (knowing that there were 4 of each). In that case, the null hypothesis was that she had no special ability, the test was Fisher's exact test, and the p-value was   so Fisher was willing to reject the null hypothesis (consider the outcome highly unlikely to be due to chance) if all were classified correctly. (In the actual experiment, Bristol correctly classified all 8 cups.)

Fisher reiterated the p = 0.05 threshold and explained its rationale, stating:[43]

It is usual and convenient for experimenters to take 5 per cent as a standard level of significance, in the sense that they are prepared to ignore all results which fail to reach this standard, and, by this means, to eliminate from further discussion the greater part of the fluctuations which chance causes have introduced into their experimental results.

He also applies this threshold to the design of experiments, noting that had only 6 cups been presented (3 of each), a perfect classification would have only yielded a p-value of   which would not have met this level of significance.[43] Fisher also underlined the interpretation of p, as the long-run proportion of values at least as extreme as the data, assuming the null hypothesis is true.

In later editions, Fisher explicitly contrasted the use of the p-value for statistical inference in science with the Neyman–Pearson method, which he terms "Acceptance Procedures".[44] Fisher emphasizes that while fixed levels such as 5%, 2%, and 1% are convenient, the exact p-value can be used, and the strength of evidence can and will be revised with further experimentation. In contrast, decision procedures require a clear-cut decision, yielding an irreversible action, and the procedure is based on costs of error, which, he argues, are inapplicable to scientific research.

Related indices edit

The E-value can refer to two concepts, both of which are related to the p-value and both of which play a role in multiple testing. First, it corresponds to a generic, more robust alternative to the p-value that can deal with optional continuation of experiments. Second, it is also used to abbreviate "expect value", which is the expected number of times that one expects to obtain a test statistic at least as extreme as the one that was actually observed if one assumes that the null hypothesis is true.[45] This expect-value is the product of the number of tests and the p-value.

The q-value is the analog of the p-value with respect to the positive false discovery rate.[46] It is used in multiple hypothesis testing to maintain statistical power while minimizing the false positive rate.[47]

The Probability of Direction (pd) is the Bayesian numerical equivalent of the p-value.[48] It corresponds to the proportion of the posterior distribution that is of the median's sign, typically varying between 50% and 100%, and representing the certainty with which an effect is positive or negative.

Second-generation p-values extend the concept of p-values by not considering extremely small, practically irrelevant effect sizes as significant.[49]

See also edit

Notes edit

  1. ^ Italicisation, capitalisation and hyphenation of the term vary. For example, AMA style uses "P value", APA style uses "p value", and the American Statistical Association uses "p-value". In all cases, the "p" stands for probability.[1]
  2. ^ The statistical significance of a result does not imply that the result also has real-world relevance. For instance, a medication might have a statistically significant effect that is too small to be interesting.
  3. ^ To be more specific, the p = 0.05 corresponds to about 1.96 standard deviations for a normal distribution (two-tailed test), and 2 standard deviations corresponds to about a 1 in 22 chance of being exceeded by chance, or p ≈ 0.045; Fisher notes these approximations.

References edit

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  29. ^ Arbuthnot J (1710). "An argument for Divine Providence, taken from the constant regularity observed in the births of both sexes" (PDF). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 27 (325–336): 186–190. doi:10.1098/rstl.1710.0011. S2CID 186209819.
  30. ^ a b Conover WJ (1999). "Chapter 3.4: The Sign Test". Practical Nonparametric Statistics (Third ed.). Wiley. pp. 157–176. ISBN 978-0-471-16068-7.
  31. ^ Sprent P (1989). Applied Nonparametric Statistical Methods (Second ed.). Chapman & Hall. ISBN 978-0-412-44980-2.
  32. ^ Stigler SM (1986). The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty Before 1900. Harvard University Press. pp. 225–226. ISBN 978-0-67440341-3.
  33. ^ Bellhouse P (2001). "John Arbuthnot". In Heyde CC, Seneta E (eds.). Statisticians of the Centuries. Springer. pp. 39–42. ISBN 978-0-387-95329-8.
  34. ^ Hald A (1998). "Chapter 4. Chance or Design: Tests of Significance". A History of Mathematical Statistics from 1750 to 1930. Wiley. p. 65.
  35. ^ Stigler SM (1986). The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty Before 1900. Harvard University Press. p. 134. ISBN 978-0-67440341-3.
  36. ^ a b Pearson K (1900). "On the criterion that a given system of deviations from the probable in the case of a correlated system of variables is such that it can be reasonably supposed to have arisen from random sampling" (PDF). Philosophical Magazine. Series 5. 50 (302): 157–175. doi:10.1080/14786440009463897.
  37. ^ Inman 2004.
  38. ^ Hubbard R, Bayarri MJ (2003), "Confusion Over Measures of Evidence (p′s) Versus Errors (α′s) in Classical Statistical Testing", The American Statistician, 57 (3): 171–178 [p. 171], doi:10.1198/0003130031856, S2CID 55671953
  39. ^ Fisher 1925, p. 47, Chapter III. Distributions.
  40. ^ a b Dallal 2012, Note 31: Why P=0.05?.
  41. ^ Fisher 1925, pp. 78–79, 98, Chapter IV. Tests of Goodness of Fit, Independence and Homogeneity; with Table of χ2, Table III. Table of χ2.
  42. ^ Fisher 1971, II. The Principles of Experimentation, Illustrated by a Psycho-physical Experiment.
  43. ^ a b Fisher 1971, Section 7. The Test of Significance.
  44. ^ Fisher 1971, Section 12.1 Scientific Inference and Acceptance Procedures.
  45. ^ "Definition of E-value". National Institutes of Health.
  46. ^ Storey JD (2003). "The positive false discovery rate: a Bayesian interpretation and the q-value". The Annals of Statistics. 31 (6): 2013–2035. doi:10.1214/aos/1074290335.
  47. ^ Storey JD, Tibshirani R (August 2003). "Statistical significance for genomewide studies". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 100 (16): 9440–9445. Bibcode:2003PNAS..100.9440S. doi:10.1073/pnas.1530509100. PMC 170937. PMID 12883005.
  48. ^ Makowski D, Ben-Shachar MS, Chen SH, Lüdecke D (10 December 2019). "Indices of Effect Existence and Significance in the Bayesian Framework". Frontiers in Psychology. 10: 2767. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02767. PMC 6914840. PMID 31920819.
  49. ^ An Introduction to Second-Generation p-Values Jeffrey D. Blume,Robert A. Greevy,Valerie F. Welty,Jeffrey R. Smith &William D. Dupont https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00031305.2018.1537893

Further reading edit

  • Denworth L (October 2019). "A Significant Problem: Standard scientific methods are under fire. Will anything change?". Scientific American. 321 (4): 62–67 (63). The use of p values for nearly a century [since 1925] to determine statistical significance of experimental results has contributed to an illusion of certainty and [to] reproducibility crises in many scientific fields. There is growing determination to reform statistical analysis... Some [researchers] suggest changing statistical methods, whereas others would do away with a threshold for defining "significant" results.
  • Elderton WP (1902). "Tables for Testing the Goodness of Fit of Theory to Observation". Biometrika. 1 (2): 155–163. doi:10.1093/biomet/1.2.155.
  • Fisher RA (1925). Statistical Methods for Research Workers. Edinburgh, Scotland: Oliver & Boyd. ISBN 978-0-05-002170-5.
  • Fisher RA (1971) [1935]. The Design of Experiments (9th ed.). Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-02-844690-5.
  • Fisher RA, Yates F (1938). Statistical tables for biological, agricultural and medical research. London, England.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Stigler SM (1986). The history of statistics : the measurement of uncertainty before 1900. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-40340-6.
  • Hubbard R, Armstrong JS (2006). (PDF). Journal of Marketing Education. 28 (2): 114–120. doi:10.1177/0273475306288399. hdl:2092/413. S2CID 34729227. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 18, 2006.
  • Hubbard R, Lindsay RM (2008). (PDF). Theory & Psychology. 18 (1): 69–88. doi:10.1177/0959354307086923. S2CID 143487211. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-10-21. Retrieved 2015-08-28.
  • Stigler S (December 2008). "Fisher and the 5% level". Chance. 21 (4): 12. doi:10.1007/s00144-008-0033-3.
  • Dallal GE (2012). The Little Handbook of Statistical Practice.
  • Biau DJ, Jolles BM, Porcher R (March 2010). "P value and the theory of hypothesis testing: an explanation for new researchers". Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research. 468 (3): 885–892. doi:10.1007/s11999-009-1164-4. PMC 2816758. PMID 19921345.
  • Reinhart A (2015). Statistics Done Wrong: The Woefully Complete Guide. No Starch Press. p. 176. ISBN 978-1593276201.
  • Benjamini, Yoav; De Veaux, Richard D.; Efron, Bradley; Evans, Scott; Glickman, Mark; Graubard, Barry I.; He, Xuming; Meng, Xiao-Li; Reid, Nancy; Stigler, Stephen M.; Vardeman, Stephen B.; Wikle, Christopher K.; Wright, Tommy; Young, Linda J.; Kafadar, Karen (2021). "The ASA President's Task Force Statement on Statistical Significance and Replicability". Annals of Applied Statistics. 15 (3): 1084–1085. doi:10.1214/21-AOAS1501.
  • Benjamin, Daniel J.; Berger, James O.; Johannesson, Magnus; Nosek, Brian A.; Wagenmakers, E.-J.; Berk, Richard; Bollen, Kenneth A.; Brembs, Björn; Brown, Lawrence; Camerer, Colin; Cesarini, David; Chambers, Christopher D.; Clyde, Merlise; Cook, Thomas D.; De Boeck, Paul; Dienes, Zoltan; Dreber, Anna; Easwaran, Kenny; Efferson, Charles; Fehr, Ernst; Fidler, Fiona; Field, Andy P.; Forster, Malcolm; George, Edward I.; Gonzalez, Richard; Goodman, Steven; Green, Edwin; Green, Donald P.; Greenwald, Anthony G.; Hadfield, Jarrod D.; Hedges, Larry V.; Held, Leonhard; Hua Ho, Teck; Hoijtink, Herbert; Hruschka, Daniel J.; Imai, Kosuke; Imbens, Guido; Ioannidis, John P. A.; Jeon, Minjeong; Jones, James Holland; Kirchler, Michael; Laibson, David; List, John; Little, Roderick; Lupia, Arthur; Machery, Edouard; Maxwell, Scott E.; McCarthy, Michael; Moore, Don A.; Morgan, Stephen L.; Munafó, Marcus; Nakagawa, Shinichi; Nyhan, Brendan; Parker, Timothy H.; Pericchi, Luis; Perugini, Marco; Rouder, Jeff; Rousseau, Judith; Savalei, Victoria; Schönbrodt, Felix D.; Sellke, Thomas; Sinclair, Betsy; Tingley, Dustin; Van Zandt, Trisha; Vazire, Simine; Watts, Duncan J.; Winship, Christopher; Wolpert, Robert L.; Xie, Yu; Young, Cristobal; Zinman, Jonathan; Johnson, Valen E. (1 September 2017). "Redefine statistical significance". Nature Human Behaviour. 2 (1): 6–10. doi:10.1038/s41562-017-0189-z. eISSN 2397-3374. hdl:10281/184094. PMID 30980045. S2CID 256726352.

External links edit

  • Free online p-values calculators for various specific tests (chi-square, Fisher's F-test, etc.).
  • Understanding p-values, including a Java applet that illustrates how the numerical values of p-values can give quite misleading impressions about the truth or falsity of the hypothesis under test.
  • StatQuest: P Values, clearly explained on YouTube
  • StatQuest: P-value pitfalls and power calculations on YouTube
  • Science Isn’t Broken - Article on how p-values can be manipulated and an interactive tool to visualize it.

value, confused, with, factor, null, hypothesis, significance, testing, displaystyle, value, note, probability, obtaining, test, results, least, extreme, result, actually, observed, under, assumption, that, null, hypothesis, correct, very, small, means, that, . Not to be confused with the P factor In null hypothesis significance testing the p displaystyle p value note 1 is the probability of obtaining test results at least as extreme as the result actually observed under the assumption that the null hypothesis is correct 2 3 A very small p value means that such an extreme observed outcome would be very unlikely under the null hypothesis Even though reporting p values of statistical tests is common practice in academic publications of many quantitative fields misinterpretation and misuse of p values is widespread and has been a major topic in mathematics and metascience 4 5 In 2016 the American Statistical Association ASA made a formal statement that p values do not measure the probability that the studied hypothesis is true or the probability that the data were produced by random chance alone and that a p value or statistical significance does not measure the size of an effect or the importance of a result or evidence regarding a model or hypothesis 6 That said a 2019 task force by ASA has issued a statement on statistical significance and replicability concluding with p values and significance tests when properly applied and interpreted increase the rigor of the conclusions drawn from data 7 Contents 1 Basic concepts 2 Definition and interpretation 2 1 Definition 2 2 Interpretations 2 3 Distribution 2 4 Distribution for composite hypothesis 3 Usage 3 1 Misuse 4 Calculation 5 Example 5 1 Testing the fairness of a coin 5 1 1 Multistage experiment design 6 History 7 Related indices 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 Further reading 12 External linksBasic concepts editIn statistics every conjecture concerning the unknown probability distribution of a collection of random variables representing the observed data X displaystyle X nbsp in some study is called a statistical hypothesis If we state one hypothesis only and the aim of the statistical test is to see whether this hypothesis is tenable but not to investigate other specific hypotheses then such a test is called a null hypothesis test As our statistical hypothesis will by definition state some property of the distribution the null hypothesis is the default hypothesis under which that property does not exist The null hypothesis is typically that some parameter such as a correlation or a difference between means in the populations of interest is zero Our hypothesis might specify the probability distribution of X displaystyle X nbsp precisely or it might only specify that it belongs to some class of distributions Often we reduce the data to a single numerical statistic e g T displaystyle T nbsp whose marginal probability distribution is closely connected to a main question of interest in the study The p value is used in the context of null hypothesis testing in order to quantify the statistical significance of a result the result being the observed value of the chosen statistic T displaystyle T nbsp note 2 The lower the p value is the lower the probability of getting that result if the null hypothesis were true A result is said to be statistically significant if it allows us to reject the null hypothesis All other things being equal smaller p values are taken as stronger evidence against the null hypothesis Loosely speaking rejection of the null hypothesis implies that there is sufficient evidence against it As a particular example if a null hypothesis states that a certain summary statistic T displaystyle T nbsp follows the standard normal distribution N 0 1 displaystyle mathcal N 0 1 nbsp then the rejection of this null hypothesis could mean that i the mean of T displaystyle T nbsp is not 0 or ii the variance of T displaystyle T nbsp is not 1 or iii T displaystyle T nbsp is not normally distributed Different tests of the same null hypothesis would be more or less sensitive to different alternatives However even if we do manage to reject the null hypothesis for all 3 alternatives and even if we know that the distribution is normal and variance is 1 the null hypothesis test does not tell us which non zero values of the mean are now most plausible The more independent observations from the same probability distribution one has the more accurate the test will be and the higher the precision with which one will be able to determine the mean value and show that it is not equal to zero but this will also increase the importance of evaluating the real world or scientific relevance of this deviation Definition and interpretation editDefinition edit The p value is the probability under the null hypothesis of obtaining a real valued test statistic at least as extreme as the one obtained Consider an observed test statistic t displaystyle t nbsp from unknown distribution T displaystyle T nbsp Then the p value p displaystyle p nbsp is what the prior probability would be of observing a test statistic value at least as extreme as t displaystyle t nbsp if null hypothesis H 0 displaystyle H 0 nbsp were true That is p Pr T t H 0 displaystyle p Pr T geq t mid H 0 nbsp for a one sided right tail test statistic distribution p Pr T t H 0 displaystyle p Pr T leq t mid H 0 nbsp for a one sided left tail test statistic distribution p 2 min Pr T t H 0 Pr T t H 0 displaystyle p 2 min Pr T geq t mid H 0 Pr T leq t mid H 0 nbsp for a two sided test statistic distribution If the distribution of T displaystyle T nbsp is symmetric about zero then p Pr T t H 0 displaystyle p Pr T geq t mid H 0 nbsp Interpretations edit The error that a practising statistician would consider the more important to avoid which is a subjective judgment is called the error of the first kind The first demand of the mathematical theory is to deduce such test criteria as would ensure that the probability of committing an error of the first kind would equal or approximately equal or not exceed a preassigned number a such as a 0 05 or 0 01 etc This number is called the level of significance Jerzy Neyman The Emergence of Mathematical Statistics 8 In a significance test the null hypothesis H 0 displaystyle H 0 nbsp is rejected if the p value is less than or equal to a predefined threshold value a displaystyle alpha nbsp which is referred to as the alpha level or significance level a displaystyle alpha nbsp is not derived from the data but rather is set by the researcher before examining the data a displaystyle alpha nbsp is commonly set to 0 05 though lower alpha levels are sometimes used In 2018 a group of statisticians led by Daniel Benjamin proposed the adoption of the 0 005 value as standard value for statistical significance worldwide 9 Different p values based on independent sets of data can be combined for instance using Fisher s combined probability test Distribution edit The p value is a function of the chosen test statistic T displaystyle T nbsp and is therefore a random variable If the null hypothesis fixes the probability distribution of T displaystyle T nbsp precisely e g H 0 8 8 0 displaystyle H 0 theta theta 0 nbsp where 8 displaystyle theta nbsp is the only parameter and if that distribution is continuous then when the null hypothesis is true the p value is uniformly distributed between 0 and 1 Regardless of the truth of the H 0 displaystyle H 0 nbsp the p value is not fixed if the same test is repeated independently with fresh data one will typically obtain a different p value in each iteration Usually only a single p value relating to a hypothesis is observed so the p value is interpreted by a significance test and no effort is made to estimate the distribution it was drawn from When a collection of p values are available e g when considering a group of studies on the same subject the distribution of p values is sometimes called a p curve 10 A p curve can be used to assess the reliability of scientific literature such as by detecting publication bias or p hacking 10 11 Distribution for composite hypothesis edit In parametric hypothesis testing problems a simple or point hypothesis refers to a hypothesis where the parameter s value is assumed to be a single number In contrast in a composite hypothesis the parameter s value is given by a set of numbers When the null hypothesis is composite or the distribution of the statistic is discrete then when the null hypothesis is true the probability of obtaining a p value less than or equal to any number between 0 and 1 is still less than or equal to that number In other words it remains the case that very small values are relatively unlikely if the null hypothesis is true and that a significance test at level a displaystyle alpha nbsp is obtained by rejecting the null hypothesis if the p value is less than or equal to a displaystyle alpha nbsp 12 13 For example when testing the null hypothesis that a distribution is normal with a mean less than or equal to zero against the alternative that the mean is greater than zero H 0 m 0 displaystyle H 0 mu leq 0 nbsp variance known the null hypothesis does not specify the exact probability distribution of the appropriate test statistic In this example that would be the Z statistic belonging to the one sided one sample Z test For each possible value of the theoretical mean the Z test statistic has a different probability distribution In these circumstances the p value is defined by taking the least favorable null hypothesis case which is typically on the border between null and alternative This definition ensures the complementarity of p values and alpha levels a 0 05 displaystyle alpha 0 05 nbsp means one only rejects the null hypothesis if the p value is less than or equal to 0 05 displaystyle 0 05 nbsp and the hypothesis test will indeed have a maximum type 1 error rate of 0 05 displaystyle 0 05 nbsp Usage editThe p value is widely used in statistical hypothesis testing specifically in null hypothesis significance testing In this method before conducting the study one first chooses a model the null hypothesis and the alpha level a most commonly 0 05 After analyzing the data if the p value is less than a that is taken to mean that the observed data is sufficiently inconsistent with the null hypothesis for the null hypothesis to be rejected However that does not prove that the null hypothesis is false The p value does not in itself establish probabilities of hypotheses Rather it is a tool for deciding whether to reject the null hypothesis 14 Misuse edit Main article Misuse of p values According to the ASA there is widespread agreement that p values are often misused and misinterpreted 3 One practice that has been particularly criticized is accepting the alternative hypothesis for any p value nominally less than 0 05 without other supporting evidence Although p values are helpful in assessing how incompatible the data are with a specified statistical model contextual factors must also be considered such as the design of a study the quality of the measurements the external evidence for the phenomenon under study and the validity of assumptions that underlie the data analysis 3 Another concern is that the p value is often misunderstood as being the probability that the null hypothesis is true 3 15 Some statisticians have proposed abandoning p values and focusing more on other inferential statistics 3 such as confidence intervals 16 17 likelihood ratios 18 19 or Bayes factors 20 21 22 but there is heated debate on the feasibility of these alternatives 23 24 Others have suggested to remove fixed significance thresholds and to interpret p values as continuous indices of the strength of evidence against the null hypothesis 25 26 Yet others suggested to report alongside p values the prior probability of a real effect that would be required to obtain a false positive risk i e the probability that there is no real effect below a pre specified threshold e g 5 27 That said in 2019 a task force by ASA had convened to consider the use of statistical methods in scientific studies specifically hypothesis tests and p values and their connection to replicability 7 It states that Different measures of uncertainty can complement one another no single measure serves all purposes citing p value as one of these measures They also stress that p values can provide valuable information when considering the specific value as well as when compared to some threshold In general it stresses that p values and significance tests when properly applied and interpreted increase the rigor of the conclusions drawn from data Calculation editUsually T displaystyle T nbsp is a test statistic A test statistic is the output of a scalar function of all the observations This statistic provides a single number such as a t statistic or an F statistic As such the test statistic follows a distribution determined by the function used to define that test statistic and the distribution of the input observational data For the important case in which the data are hypothesized to be a random sample from a normal distribution depending on the nature of the test statistic and the hypotheses of interest about its distribution different null hypothesis tests have been developed Some such tests are the z test for hypotheses concerning the mean of a normal distribution with known variance the t test based on Student s t distribution of a suitable statistic for hypotheses concerning the mean of a normal distribution when the variance is unknown the F test based on the F distribution of yet another statistic for hypotheses concerning the variance For data of other nature for instance categorical discrete data test statistics might be constructed whose null hypothesis distribution is based on normal approximations to appropriate statistics obtained by invoking the central limit theorem for large samples as in the case of Pearson s chi squared test Thus computing a p value requires a null hypothesis a test statistic together with deciding whether the researcher is performing a one tailed test or a two tailed test and data Even though computing the test statistic on given data may be easy computing the sampling distribution under the null hypothesis and then computing its cumulative distribution function CDF is often a difficult problem Today this computation is done using statistical software often via numeric methods rather than exact formulae but in the early and mid 20th century this was instead done via tables of values and one interpolated or extrapolated p values from these discrete values citation needed Rather than using a table of p values Fisher instead inverted the CDF publishing a list of values of the test statistic for given fixed p values this corresponds to computing the quantile function inverse CDF Example editMain article Checking whether a coin is fair Testing the fairness of a coin edit This section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed April 2024 Learn how and when to remove this message As an example of a statistical test an experiment is performed to determine whether a coin flip is fair equal chance of landing heads or tails or unfairly biased one outcome being more likely than the other Suppose that the experimental results show the coin turning up heads 14 times out of 20 total flips The full data X displaystyle X nbsp would be a sequence of twenty times the symbol H or T The statistic on which one might focus could be the total number T displaystyle T nbsp of heads The null hypothesis is that the coin is fair and coin tosses are independent of one another If a right tailed test is considered which would be the case if one is actually interested in the possibility that the coin is biased towards falling heads then the p value of this result is the chance of a fair coin landing on heads at least 14 times out of 20 flips That probability can be computed from binomial coefficients as Pr 14 heads Pr 15 heads Pr 20 heads 1 2 20 20 14 20 15 20 20 60 460 1 048 576 0 058 displaystyle begin aligned amp Pr 14 text heads Pr 15 text heads cdots Pr 20 text heads amp frac 1 2 20 left binom 20 14 binom 20 15 cdots binom 20 20 right frac 60 460 1 048 576 approx 0 058 end aligned nbsp This probability is the p value considering only extreme results that favor heads This is called a one tailed test However one might be interested in deviations in either direction favoring either heads or tails The two tailed p value which considers deviations favoring either heads or tails may instead be calculated As the binomial distribution is symmetrical for a fair coin the two sided p value is simply twice the above calculated single sided p value the two sided p value is 0 115 In the above example Null hypothesis H0 The coin is fair with Pr heads 0 5 Test statistic Number of heads Alpha level designated threshold of significance 0 05 Observation O 14 heads out of 20 flips Two tailed p value of observation O given H0 2 min Pr no of heads 14 heads Pr no of heads 14 heads 2 min 0 058 0 978 2 0 058 0 115 The Pr no of heads 14 heads 1 Pr no of heads 14 heads Pr no of head 14 1 0 058 0 036 0 978 however the symmetry of this binomial distribution makes it an unnecessary computation to find the smaller of the two probabilities Here the calculated p value exceeds 0 05 meaning that the data falls within the range of what would happen 95 of the time if the coin were fair Hence the null hypothesis is not rejected at the 0 05 level However had one more head been obtained the resulting p value two tailed would have been 0 0414 4 14 in which case the null hypothesis would be rejected at the 0 05 level Multistage experiment design edit The difference between the two meanings of extreme appear when we consider a multistage experiment for testing the fairness of the coin Suppose we design the experiment as follows Flip the coin twice If both comes up heads or tails end the experiment Else flip the coin 4 more times This experiment has 7 types of outcomes 2 heads 2 tails 5 heads 1 tail 1 head 5 tails We now calculate the p value of the 3 heads 3 tails outcome If we use the test statistic heads tails displaystyle text heads text tails nbsp then under the null hypothesis is exactly 1 for two sided p value and exactly 19 32 displaystyle 19 32 nbsp for one sided left tail p value and same for one sided right tail p value If we consider every outcome that has equal or lower probability than 3 heads 3 tails as at least as extreme then the p value is exactly 1 2 displaystyle 1 2 nbsp However suppose we have planned to simply flip the coin 6 times no matter what happens then the second definition of p value would mean that the p value of 3 heads 3 tails is exactly 1 Thus the at least as extreme definition of p value is deeply contextual and depends on what the experimenter planned to do even in situations that did not occur History edit nbsp John Arbuthnot nbsp Pierre Simon Laplace nbsp Karl Pearson nbsp Ronald Fisher P value computations date back to the 1700s where they were computed for the human sex ratio at birth and used to compute statistical significance compared to the null hypothesis of equal probability of male and female births 28 John Arbuthnot studied this question in 1710 29 30 31 32 and examined birth records in London for each of the 82 years from 1629 to 1710 In every year the number of males born in London exceeded the number of females Considering more male or more female births as equally likely the probability of the observed outcome is 1 282 or about 1 in 4 836 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 in modern terms the p value This is vanishingly small leading Arbuthnot that this was not due to chance but to divine providence From whence it follows that it is Art not Chance that governs In modern terms he rejected the null hypothesis of equally likely male and female births at the p 1 282 significance level This and other work by Arbuthnot is credited as the first use of significance tests 33 the first example of reasoning about statistical significance 34 and perhaps the first published report of a nonparametric test 30 specifically the sign test see details at Sign test History The same question was later addressed by Pierre Simon Laplace who instead used a parametric test modeling the number of male births with a binomial distribution 35 In the 1770s Laplace considered the statistics of almost half a million births The statistics showed an excess of boys compared to girls He concluded by calculation of a p value that the excess was a real but unexplained effect The p value was first formally introduced by Karl Pearson in his Pearson s chi squared test 36 using the chi squared distribution and notated as capital P 36 The p values for the chi squared distribution for various values of x2 and degrees of freedom now notated as P were calculated in Elderton 1902 collected in Pearson 1914 pp xxxi xxxiii 26 28 Table XII harv error no target CITEREFPearson1914 help The use of the p value in statistics was popularized by Ronald Fisher 37 full citation needed and it plays a central role in his approach to the subject 38 In his influential book Statistical Methods for Research Workers 1925 Fisher proposed the level p 0 05 or a 1 in 20 chance of being exceeded by chance as a limit for statistical significance and applied this to a normal distribution as a two tailed test thus yielding the rule of two standard deviations on a normal distribution for statistical significance see 68 95 99 7 rule 39 note 3 40 He then computed a table of values similar to Elderton but importantly reversed the roles of x2 and p That is rather than computing p for different values of x2 and degrees of freedom n he computed values of x2 that yield specified p values specifically 0 99 0 98 0 95 0 90 0 80 0 70 0 50 0 30 0 20 0 10 0 05 0 02 and 0 01 41 That allowed computed values of x2 to be compared against cutoffs and encouraged the use of p values especially 0 05 0 02 and 0 01 as cutoffs instead of computing and reporting p values themselves The same type of tables were then compiled in Fisher amp Yates 1938 which cemented the approach 40 As an illustration of the application of p values to the design and interpretation of experiments in his following book The Design of Experiments 1935 Fisher presented the lady tasting tea experiment 42 which is the archetypal example of the p value To evaluate a lady s claim that she Muriel Bristol could distinguish by taste how tea is prepared first adding the milk to the cup then the tea or first tea then milk she was sequentially presented with 8 cups 4 prepared one way 4 prepared the other and asked to determine the preparation of each cup knowing that there were 4 of each In that case the null hypothesis was that she had no special ability the test was Fisher s exact test and the p value was 1 8 4 1 70 0 014 displaystyle 1 binom 8 4 1 70 approx 0 014 nbsp so Fisher was willing to reject the null hypothesis consider the outcome highly unlikely to be due to chance if all were classified correctly In the actual experiment Bristol correctly classified all 8 cups Fisher reiterated the p 0 05 threshold and explained its rationale stating 43 It is usual and convenient for experimenters to take 5 per cent as a standard level of significance in the sense that they are prepared to ignore all results which fail to reach this standard and by this means to eliminate from further discussion the greater part of the fluctuations which chance causes have introduced into their experimental results He also applies this threshold to the design of experiments noting that had only 6 cups been presented 3 of each a perfect classification would have only yielded a p value of 1 6 3 1 20 0 05 displaystyle 1 binom 6 3 1 20 0 05 nbsp which would not have met this level of significance 43 Fisher also underlined the interpretation of p as the long run proportion of values at least as extreme as the data assuming the null hypothesis is true In later editions Fisher explicitly contrasted the use of the p value for statistical inference in science with the Neyman Pearson method which he terms Acceptance Procedures 44 Fisher emphasizes that while fixed levels such as 5 2 and 1 are convenient the exact p value can be used and the strength of evidence can and will be revised with further experimentation In contrast decision procedures require a clear cut decision yielding an irreversible action and the procedure is based on costs of error which he argues are inapplicable to scientific research Related indices editThe E value can refer to two concepts both of which are related to the p value and both of which play a role in multiple testing First it corresponds to a generic more robust alternative to the p value that can deal with optional continuation of experiments Second it is also used to abbreviate expect value which is the expected number of times that one expects to obtain a test statistic at least as extreme as the one that was actually observed if one assumes that the null hypothesis is true 45 This expect value is the product of the number of tests and the p value The q value is the analog of the p value with respect to the positive false discovery rate 46 It is used in multiple hypothesis testing to maintain statistical power while minimizing the false positive rate 47 The Probability of Direction pd is the Bayesian numerical equivalent of the p value 48 It corresponds to the proportion of the posterior distribution that is of the median s sign typically varying between 50 and 100 and representing the certainty with which an effect is positive or negative Second generation p values extend the concept of p values by not considering extremely small practically irrelevant effect sizes as significant 49 See also editStudent s t test Bonferroni correction Counternull Fisher s method of combining p values Generalized p value Harmonic mean p value Holm Bonferroni method Multiple comparisons problem p rep p value fallacyNotes edit Italicisation capitalisation and hyphenation of the term vary For example AMA style uses P value APA style uses p value and the American Statistical Association uses p value In all cases the p stands for probability 1 The statistical significance of a result does not imply that the result also has real world relevance For instance a medication might have a statistically significant effect that is too small to be interesting To be more specific the p 0 05 corresponds to about 1 96 standard deviations for a normal distribution two tailed test and 2 standard deviations corresponds to about a 1 in 22 chance of being exceeded by chance or p 0 045 Fisher notes these approximations References edit ASA House Style PDF Amstat News American Statistical Association Aschwanden C 2015 11 24 Not Even Scientists Can Easily Explain P values FiveThirtyEight Archived from the original on 25 September 2019 Retrieved 11 October 2019 a b c d e Wasserstein RL Lazar NA 7 March 2016 The ASA s Statement on p Values Context Process and Purpose The American Statistician 70 2 129 133 doi 10 1080 00031305 2016 1154108 Hubbard R Lindsay RM 2008 Why P Values Are Not a Useful Measure of Evidence in Statistical Significance Testing Theory amp Psychology 18 1 69 88 doi 10 1177 0959354307086923 S2CID 143487211 Munafo MR Nosek BA Bishop DV Button KS Chambers CD du Sert NP et al January 2017 A manifesto for reproducible science Nature Human Behaviour 1 0021 doi 10 1038 s41562 016 0021 PMC 7610724 PMID 33954258 S2CID 6326747 Wasserstein Ronald L Lazar Nicole A 2016 04 02 The ASA Statement on p Values Context Process and Purpose The American Statistician 70 2 129 133 doi 10 1080 00031305 2016 1154108 ISSN 0003 1305 S2CID 124084622 a b Benjamini Yoav De Veaux Richard D Efron Bradley Evans Scott Glickman Mark Graubard Barry I He Xuming Meng Xiao Li Reid Nancy M Stigler Stephen M Vardeman Stephen B Wikle Christopher K Wright Tommy Young Linda J Kafadar Karen 2021 10 02 ASA President s Task Force Statement on Statistical Significance and Replicability Chance 34 4 Informa UK Limited 10 11 doi 10 1080 09332480 2021 2003631 ISSN 0933 2480 Neyman Jerzy 1976 The Emergence of Mathematical Statistics A Historical Sketch with Particular Reference to the United States In Owen D B ed On the History of Statistics and Probability Textbooks and Monographs New York Marcel Dekker Inc p 161 Benjamin Daniel J Berger James O Johannesson Magnus Nosek Brian A Wagenmakers E J Berk Richard Bollen Kenneth A Brembs Bjorn Brown Lawrence Camerer Colin Cesarini David Chambers Christopher D Clyde Merlise Cook Thomas D De Boeck Paul Dienes Zoltan Dreber Anna Easwaran Kenny Efferson Charles Fehr Ernst Fidler Fiona Field Andy P Forster Malcolm George Edward I Gonzalez Richard Goodman Steven Green Edwin Green Donald P Greenwald Anthony G Hadfield Jarrod D Hedges Larry V Held Leonhard Hua Ho Teck Hoijtink Herbert Hruschka Daniel J Imai Kosuke Imbens Guido Ioannidis John P A Jeon Minjeong Jones James Holland Kirchler Michael Laibson David List John Little Roderick Lupia Arthur Machery Edouard Maxwell Scott E McCarthy Michael Moore Don A Morgan Stephen L Munafo Marcus Nakagawa Shinichi Nyhan Brendan Parker Timothy H Pericchi Luis Perugini Marco Rouder Jeff Rousseau Judith Savalei Victoria Schonbrodt Felix D Sellke Thomas Sinclair Betsy Tingley Dustin Van Zandt Trisha Vazire Simine Watts Duncan J Winship Christopher Wolpert Robert L Xie Yu Young Cristobal Zinman Jonathan Johnson Valen E 1 September 2017 Redefine statistical significance Nature Human Behaviour 2 1 6 10 doi 10 1038 s41562 017 0189 z eISSN 2397 3374 hdl 10281 184094 PMID 30980045 S2CID 256726352 a b Head ML Holman L Lanfear R Kahn AT Jennions MD March 2015 The extent and consequences of p hacking in science PLOS Biology 13 3 e1002106 doi 10 1371 journal pbio 1002106 PMC 4359000 PMID 25768323 Simonsohn U Nelson LD Simmons JP November 2014 p Curve and Effect Size Correcting for Publication Bias Using Only Significant Results Perspectives on Psychological Science 9 6 666 681 doi 10 1177 1745691614553988 PMID 26186117 S2CID 39975518 Bhattacharya B Habtzghi D 2002 Median of the p value under the alternative hypothesis The American Statistician 56 3 202 6 doi 10 1198 000313002146 S2CID 33812107 Hung HM O Neill RT Bauer P Kohne K March 1997 The behavior of the P value when the alternative hypothesis is true Biometrics Submitted manuscript 53 1 11 22 doi 10 2307 2533093 JSTOR 2533093 PMID 9147587 Nuzzo R February 2014 Scientific method statistical errors Nature 506 7487 150 152 Bibcode 2014Natur 506 150N doi 10 1038 506150a PMID 24522584 Colquhoun D November 2014 An investigation of the false discovery rate and the misinterpretation of p values Royal Society Open Science 1 3 140216 arXiv 1407 5296 Bibcode 2014RSOS 140216C doi 10 1098 rsos 140216 PMC 4448847 PMID 26064558 Lee DK December 2016 Alternatives to P value confidence interval and effect size Korean Journal of Anesthesiology 69 6 555 562 doi 10 4097 kjae 2016 69 6 555 PMC 5133225 PMID 27924194 Ranstam J August 2012 Why the P value culture is bad and confidence intervals a better alternative Osteoarthritis and Cartilage 20 8 805 808 doi 10 1016 j joca 2012 04 001 PMID 22503814 Perneger TV May 2001 Sifting the evidence Likelihood ratios are alternatives to P values BMJ 322 7295 1184 1185 doi 10 1136 bmj 322 7295 1184 PMC 1120301 PMID 11379590 Royall R 2004 The Likelihood Paradigm for Statistical Evidence The Nature of Scientific Evidence pp 119 152 doi 10 7208 chicago 9780226789583 003 0005 ISBN 9780226789576 Schimmack U 30 April 2015 Replacing p values with Bayes Factors A Miracle Cure for the Replicability Crisis in Psychological Science Replicability Index Retrieved 7 March 2017 Marden JI December 2000 Hypothesis Testing From p Values to Bayes Factors Journal of the American Statistical Association 95 452 1316 1320 doi 10 2307 2669779 JSTOR 2669779 Stern HS 16 February 2016 A Test by Any Other Name P Values Bayes Factors and Statistical Inference Multivariate Behavioral Research 51 1 23 29 doi 10 1080 00273171 2015 1099032 PMC 4809350 PMID 26881954 Murtaugh PA March 2014 In defense of P values Ecology 95 3 611 617 Bibcode 2014Ecol 95 611M doi 10 1890 13 0590 1 PMID 24804441 Aschwanden C 7 March 2016 Statisticians Found One Thing They Can Agree On It s Time To Stop Misusing P Values FiveThirtyEight Amrhein V Korner Nievergelt F Roth T 2017 The earth is flat p gt 0 05 significance thresholds and the crisis of unreplicable research PeerJ 5 e3544 doi 10 7717 peerj 3544 PMC 5502092 PMID 28698825 Amrhein V Greenland S January 2018 Remove rather than redefine statistical significance Nature Human Behaviour 2 1 4 doi 10 1038 s41562 017 0224 0 PMID 30980046 S2CID 46814177 Colquhoun D December 2017 The reproducibility of research and the misinterpretation of p values Royal Society Open Science 4 12 171085 doi 10 1098 rsos 171085 PMC 5750014 PMID 29308247 Brian E Jaisson M 2007 Physico Theology and Mathematics 1710 1794 The Descent of Human Sex Ratio at Birth Springer Science amp Business Media pp 1 25 ISBN 978 1 4020 6036 6 Arbuthnot J 1710 An argument for Divine Providence taken from the constant regularity observed in the births of both sexes PDF Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 27 325 336 186 190 doi 10 1098 rstl 1710 0011 S2CID 186209819 a b Conover WJ 1999 Chapter 3 4 The Sign Test Practical Nonparametric Statistics Third ed Wiley pp 157 176 ISBN 978 0 471 16068 7 Sprent P 1989 Applied Nonparametric Statistical Methods Second ed Chapman amp Hall ISBN 978 0 412 44980 2 Stigler SM 1986 The History of Statistics The Measurement of Uncertainty Before 1900 Harvard University Press pp 225 226 ISBN 978 0 67440341 3 Bellhouse P 2001 John Arbuthnot In Heyde CC Seneta E eds Statisticians of the Centuries Springer pp 39 42 ISBN 978 0 387 95329 8 Hald A 1998 Chapter 4 Chance or Design Tests of Significance A History of Mathematical Statistics from 1750 to 1930 Wiley p 65 Stigler SM 1986 The History of Statistics The Measurement of Uncertainty Before 1900 Harvard University Press p 134 ISBN 978 0 67440341 3 a b Pearson K 1900 On the criterion that a given system of deviations from the probable in the case of a correlated system of variables is such that it can be reasonably supposed to have arisen from random sampling PDF Philosophical Magazine Series 5 50 302 157 175 doi 10 1080 14786440009463897 Inman 2004 sfn error no target CITEREFInman2004 help Hubbard R Bayarri MJ 2003 Confusion Over Measures of Evidence p s Versus Errors a s in Classical Statistical Testing The American Statistician 57 3 171 178 p 171 doi 10 1198 0003130031856 S2CID 55671953 Fisher 1925 p 47 Chapter III Distributions a b Dallal 2012 Note 31 Why P 0 05 Fisher 1925 pp 78 79 98 Chapter IV Tests of Goodness of Fit Independence and Homogeneity with Table of x2 Table III Table of x2 Fisher 1971 II The Principles of Experimentation Illustrated by a Psycho physical Experiment a b Fisher 1971 Section 7 The Test of Significance Fisher 1971 Section 12 1 Scientific Inference and Acceptance Procedures Definition of E value National Institutes of Health Storey JD 2003 The positive false discovery rate a Bayesian interpretation and the q value The Annals of Statistics 31 6 2013 2035 doi 10 1214 aos 1074290335 Storey JD Tibshirani R August 2003 Statistical significance for genomewide studies Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 100 16 9440 9445 Bibcode 2003PNAS 100 9440S doi 10 1073 pnas 1530509100 PMC 170937 PMID 12883005 Makowski D Ben Shachar MS Chen SH Ludecke D 10 December 2019 Indices of Effect Existence and Significance in the Bayesian Framework Frontiers in Psychology 10 2767 doi 10 3389 fpsyg 2019 02767 PMC 6914840 PMID 31920819 An Introduction to Second Generation p Values Jeffrey D Blume Robert A Greevy Valerie F Welty Jeffrey R Smith amp William D Dupont https www tandfonline com doi full 10 1080 00031305 2018 1537893Further reading editDenworth L October 2019 A Significant Problem Standard scientific methods are under fire Will anything change Scientific American 321 4 62 67 63 The use of p values for nearly a century since 1925 to determine statistical significance of experimental results has contributed to an illusion of certainty and to reproducibility crises in many scientific fields There is growing determination to reform statistical analysis Some researchers suggest changing statistical methods whereas others would do away with a threshold for defining significant results Elderton WP 1902 Tables for Testing the Goodness of Fit of Theory to Observation Biometrika 1 2 155 163 doi 10 1093 biomet 1 2 155 Fisher RA 1925 Statistical Methods for Research Workers Edinburgh Scotland Oliver amp Boyd ISBN 978 0 05 002170 5 Fisher RA 1971 1935 The Design of Experiments 9th ed Macmillan ISBN 978 0 02 844690 5 Fisher RA Yates F 1938 Statistical tables for biological agricultural and medical research London England a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link Stigler SM 1986 The history of statistics the measurement of uncertainty before 1900 Cambridge Mass Belknap Press of Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0 674 40340 6 Hubbard R Armstrong JS 2006 Why We Don t Really Know What Statistical Significance Means Implications for Educators PDF Journal of Marketing Education 28 2 114 120 doi 10 1177 0273475306288399 hdl 2092 413 S2CID 34729227 Archived from the original PDF on May 18 2006 Hubbard R Lindsay RM 2008 Why P Values Are Not a Useful Measure of Evidence in Statistical Significance Testing PDF Theory amp Psychology 18 1 69 88 doi 10 1177 0959354307086923 S2CID 143487211 Archived from the original PDF on 2016 10 21 Retrieved 2015 08 28 Stigler S December 2008 Fisher and the 5 level Chance 21 4 12 doi 10 1007 s00144 008 0033 3 Dallal GE 2012 The Little Handbook of Statistical Practice Biau DJ Jolles BM Porcher R March 2010 P value and the theory of hypothesis testing an explanation for new researchers Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research 468 3 885 892 doi 10 1007 s11999 009 1164 4 PMC 2816758 PMID 19921345 Reinhart A 2015 Statistics Done Wrong The Woefully Complete Guide No Starch Press p 176 ISBN 978 1593276201 Benjamini Yoav De Veaux Richard D Efron Bradley Evans Scott Glickman Mark Graubard Barry I He Xuming Meng Xiao Li Reid Nancy Stigler Stephen M Vardeman Stephen B Wikle Christopher K Wright Tommy Young Linda J Kafadar Karen 2021 The ASA President s Task Force Statement on Statistical Significance and Replicability Annals of Applied Statistics 15 3 1084 1085 doi 10 1214 21 AOAS1501 Benjamin Daniel J Berger James O Johannesson Magnus Nosek Brian A Wagenmakers E J Berk Richard Bollen Kenneth A Brembs Bjorn Brown Lawrence Camerer Colin Cesarini David Chambers Christopher D Clyde Merlise Cook Thomas D De Boeck Paul Dienes Zoltan Dreber Anna Easwaran Kenny Efferson Charles Fehr Ernst Fidler Fiona Field Andy P Forster Malcolm George Edward I Gonzalez Richard Goodman Steven Green Edwin Green Donald P Greenwald Anthony G Hadfield Jarrod D Hedges Larry V Held Leonhard Hua Ho Teck Hoijtink Herbert Hruschka Daniel J Imai Kosuke Imbens Guido Ioannidis John P A Jeon Minjeong Jones James Holland Kirchler Michael Laibson David List John Little Roderick Lupia Arthur Machery Edouard Maxwell Scott E McCarthy Michael Moore Don A Morgan Stephen L Munafo Marcus Nakagawa Shinichi Nyhan Brendan Parker Timothy H Pericchi Luis Perugini Marco Rouder Jeff Rousseau Judith Savalei Victoria Schonbrodt Felix D Sellke Thomas Sinclair Betsy Tingley Dustin Van Zandt Trisha Vazire Simine Watts Duncan J Winship Christopher Wolpert Robert L Xie Yu Young Cristobal Zinman Jonathan Johnson Valen E 1 September 2017 Redefine statistical significance Nature Human Behaviour 2 1 6 10 doi 10 1038 s41562 017 0189 z eISSN 2397 3374 hdl 10281 184094 PMID 30980045 S2CID 256726352 External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to P value Free online p values calculators for various specific tests chi square Fisher s F test etc Understanding p values including a Java applet that illustrates how the numerical values of p values can give quite misleading impressions about the truth or falsity of the hypothesis under test StatQuest P Values clearly explained on YouTube StatQuest P value pitfalls and power calculations on YouTube Science Isn t Broken Article on how p values can be manipulated and an interactive tool to visualize it Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title P value amp oldid 1223374181, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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