Chapter 1. An Introduction to Statistical Significance
Much of experimental science comes down to measuring differences. Does one medicine work better than another? Do cells with one version of a gene synthesize more of an enzyme than cells with another version? Does one kind of signal processing algorithm detect pulsars better than another? Is one catalyst more effective at speeding a chemical reaction than another?
We use statistics to make judgments about these kinds of differences. We will always observe some difference due to luck and random variation, so statisticians talk about statistically significant differences when the difference is larger than could easily be produced by luck. So first we must learn how to make that decision.
The Power ...
Get Statistics Done Wrong now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
