Making decisions is a ubiquitous mental activity in our private and professional or public lives. It entails choosing one course of action from an available shortlist of options. Statistics for Making Decisions places decision making at the centre of statistical inference, proposing its theory as a new paradigm for statistical practice. The analysis in this paradigm is earnest about prior information and the consequences of the various kinds of errors that may be committed. Its conclusion is a course of action tailored to the perspective of the specific client or sponsor of the analysis. The author’s intention is a wholesale replacement of hypothesis testing, indicting it with the argument that it has no means of incorporating the consequences of errors which self-evidently matter to the client. The volume appeals to the analyst who deals with the simplest statistical problems of comparing two samples (which one has a greater mean or variance), or deciding whether a parameter is positive or negative. It combines highlighting the deficiencies of hypothesis testing with promoting a principled solution based on the idea of a currency for error, of which we want to spend as little as possible. This is implemented by selecting the option for which the expected loss is smallest (the Bayes rule). The price to pay is the need for a more detailed description of the options, and eliciting and quantifying the consequences (ramifications) of the errors. This is what our clients do informally and often inexpertly after receiving outputs of the analysis in an established format, such as the verdict of a hypothesis test or an estimate and its standard error. As a scientific discipline and profession, statistics has a potential to do this much better and deliver to the client a more complete and more relevant product. Nicholas T. Longford is a senior statistician at Imperial College, London, specialising in statistical methods for neonatal medicine. His interests include causal analysis of observational studies, decision theory, and the contest of modelling and design in data analysis. His longer-term appointments in the past include Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ, USA, de Montfort University, Leicester, England, and directorship of SNTL, a statistics research and consulting company. He is the author of over 100 journal articles and six other monographs on a variety of topics in applied statistics.
This monograph presents a radical rethinking of how elementary inferences should be made in statistics, implementing a comprehensive alternative to hypothesis testing in which the control of the probabilities of the errors is replaced by selecting the course of action (one of the available options) associated with the smallest expected loss. Its strength is that the inferences are responsive to the elicited or declared consequences of the erroneous decisions, and so they can be closely tailored to the client’s perspective, priorities, value judgments and other prior information, together with the uncertainty about them.
Making decisions is a ubiquitous mental activity in our private and professional or public lives. It entails choosing one course of action from an available shortlist of options. Statistics for Making Decisions places decision making at the centre of statistical inference, proposing its theory as a new paradigm for statistical practice. The analysis in this paradigm is earnest about prior information and the consequences of the various kinds of errors that may be committed. Its conclusion is a course of action tailored to the perspective of the specific client or sponsor of the analysis. The author’s intention is a wholesale replacement of hypothesis testing, indicting it with the argument that it has no means of incorporating the consequences of errors which self-evidently matter to the client. The volume appeals to the analyst who deals with the simplest statistical problems of comparing two samples (which one has a greater mean or variance), or deciding whether a parameter is positive or negative. It combines highlighting the deficiencies of hypothesis testing with promoting a principled solution based on the idea of a currency for error, of which we want to spend as little as possible. This is implemented by selecting the option for which the expected loss is smallest (the Bayes rule). The price to pay is the need for a more detailed description of the options, and eliciting and quantifying the consequences (ramifications) of the errors. This is what our clients do informally and often inexpertly after receiving outputs of the analysis in an established format, such as the verdict of a hypothesis test or an estimate and its standard error. As a scientific discipline and profession, statistics has a potential to do this much better and deliver to the client a more complete and more relevant product. Nicholas T. Longford is a senior statistician at Imperial College, London, specialising in statistical methods for neonatal medicine. His interests include causal analysis of observational studies, decision theory, and the contest of modelling and design in data analysis. His longer-term appointments in the past include Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ, USA, de Montfort University, Leicester, England, and directorship of SNTL, a statistics research and consulting company. He is the author of over 100 journal articles and six other monographs on a variety of topics in applied statistics.
There is no shortage of incentives to study and reduce poverty in our societies. Poverty is studied in economics and political sciences, and population surveys are an important source of information about it. The design and analysis of such surveys is principally a statistical subject matter and the computer is essential for their data compilation
This book evolved from lectures, courses and workshops on missing data and small-area estimation that I presented during my tenure as the ?rst C- pion Fellow (2000–2002). For the Fellowship I proposed these two topics as areas in which the academic statistics could contribute to the development of government statistics, in exchange for access to the operational details and background that would inform the direction and sharpen the focus of a- demic research. After a few years of involvement, I have come to realise that the separation of ‘academic’ and ‘industrial’ statistics is not well suited to either party, and their integration is the key to progress in both branches. Most of the work on this monograph was done while I was a visiting l- turer at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand. The hospitality and stimulating academic environment of their Institute of Information S- ence and Technology is gratefully acknowledged. I could not name all those who commented on my lecture notes and on the presentations themselves; apart from them, I want to thank the organisers and silent attendees of all the events, and, with a modicum of reluctance, the ‘grey ?gures’ who kept inquiring whether I was any nearer the completion of whatever stage I had been foolish enough to attach a date.
This textbook is for graduate students and research workers in social statistics and related subject areas. It follows a novel curriculum developed around the basic statistical activities: sampling, measurement and inference. The monograph aims to prepare the reader for the career of an independent social statistician and to serve as a reference for methods, ideas for and ways of studying of human populations. Elementary linear algebra and calculus are prerequisites, although the exposition is quite forgiving. Familiarity with statistical software at the outset is an advantage, but it can be developed while reading the first few chapters.
A theme running through this book is that of making inference about sources of variation or uncertainty, and the author shows how information about these sources can be used for improved estimation of certain elementary quantities. Amongst the topics covered are: essay rating, summarizing item-level properties, equating of tests, small-area estimation, and incomplete longitudinal studies. Throughout, examples are given using real data sets which exemplify these applications.
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