Re: How many data points for statistical significant results?
- From: Dave <foo@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2008 13:02:14 +0100
Paige Miller wrote:
On Sep 8, 2:59 pm, Dave <f...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Dave
First of all, you don't have good definitions. I think you probably
won't ever get very far unless you have good definitions. And the
problem is not that percentile isn't well defined, the problem is that
"statistically significant" isn't well defined.
Thank you
In particular, you need to know what the words "statistically
significant" mean to the person making the request. In statistics,
they refer to an hypothesis test, and I don't see that you have such a
thing here.
I see.
To define an hypothesis test, you want to test that the
mean (or median or standard deviation or 5th-percentile or whatever)
is equal to a specific value. I don't see that here. Alternatively,
you might want the width of an X% confidence interval for the mean (or
median or standard deviation or 5th-percentile or whatever) to be
smaller than a given quantity. I don't see that here either.
If someone makes a request of you in the language of statistics, you
and your requester have to use the language and mechanics of
statistics throughout the problem definition phase and throughout the
problem execution phase, or you have to translate some words that are
not statistical into words that mean something statistically. Asking
for something to be "statistically significant" without additional
information that statistics requires, is an undefined problem and
cannot be solved. To perform statistics properly, you will need to
consult with the person who made the request to obtain a much better
idea about what he is looking for and why, so that his request will
make sense and be defined in a statistical way.
Thank you. I suspect the person making the request is not sure, but I have gone back to clarify matters.
--.
Paige Miller
paige\dot\miller \at\ kodak\dot\com
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