from Hacker News

Lies. Damned Lies. P-value thresholds

by fghorow on 12/28/24, 3:39 PM with 24 comments

  • by sdwr on 1/1/25, 1:31 AM

    This piece is basically set up to fail. It's historical, based on math, and doesn't venture towards any drama or stakes. I can easily imagine it being a farticle on a third-rate SEO webzine.

    So why does it work okay as a New Yorker piece? How is their writing consistently good?

    I think their secret sauce is the (implied) perspective. The impression that the author has a unique, complete, accurate take on the subject, and is letting you in on it piece by piece, in a meandering way.

  • by brudgers on 12/30/24, 2:06 AM

    Previous discussion under original title, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20978134

  • by dccsillag on 1/1/25, 12:35 PM

    If thresholding of P-values is the issue, E-values -- a recent, much more elegant, easier to work with, and more robust alternative to P-values -- solve this.

    https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.08040 https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.00901 https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.01948 https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.23614

  • by Hilift on 1/1/25, 9:33 AM

    Harold Shipman with the NHS killed about one person per month for 30 years, and the response was to ask if doctors could be monitored to discover this earlier. However, the systems they conceived "eventually cast suspicion on the innocent". 25 years later the NHS is still struggling to answer these questions.

  • by chkgk on 1/1/25, 1:06 AM

  • by flobosg on 1/1/25, 4:48 AM

    (2019)

  • by moonlion_eth on 1/1/25, 3:24 AM

    P values are why llms hallucinate