Re: How to determine if a number is statistically meaningful

From: Paige Miller (paige.miller_at_kodak.com)
Date: 03/22/05 

Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 11:24:57 -0500

davegb wrote:
> Richard,
> Thanks for your reply.
>
> "There is not any magic in "statistics" to determine a threshold."
>
> Well, that's a big disappointment! Not to mention disallusionment. I
> thought that one of you statistics wizards would cough up a formula
> before breakfast that even an engineer could understand.
>
> Will check out IMDB, and maybe Consumer Reports. Seems to me they deal
> with this issue all the time. What I thought, when I started, would be
> a simple inquiry has turned into quite a chase.
> Thanks again.

Undoubtedly, you will find a lot of statisticians in IMDB. My
favorite statistical movie of all time was the "Lady Tasting Tea"
movie starring, if memory serves, Leonard Nimoy as Gossett and
Charlize Theron as the lady tasting tea. But I digress...

Now as I understand things, Consumer Reports does indeed use
statisticians, and they also use knowledge of the appropriate area
under study (i.e. non-statistical knowledge) to determine
thresholds. Statistics can tell you whether two things are different
or not (with a certain level of confidence), given the level of
noise in the data. Statistics cannot tell you whether something is
"good" or "excellent" or "fair" or "poor" unless someone first
defines what constitutes "excellent", "good", etc. 

-- 
Paige Miller
Eastman Kodak Company
paige dot miller at kodak dot com
http://www.kodak.com
"It's nothing until I call it!" -- Bill Klem, NL Umpire
"When you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance" 
-- Lee Ann Womack

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