Skip to Content
Statistics Done Wrong
book

Statistics Done Wrong

by Alex Reinhart
March 2015
Intermediate to advanced
176 pages
4h 27m
English
No Starch Press
Content preview from Statistics Done Wrong

Chapter 4. The P Value and the Base Rate Fallacy

You’ve seen that p values are hard to interpret. Getting a statistically insignificant result doesn’t mean there’s no difference between two groups. But what about getting a significant result?

Suppose I’m testing 100 potential cancer medications. Only 10 of these drugs actually work, but I don’t know which; I must perform experiments to find them. In these experiments, I’ll look for p < 0.05 gains over a placebo, demonstrating that the drug has a significant benefit.

Figure 4-1 illustrates the situation. Each square in the grid represents one drug. In reality, only the 10 drugs in the top row work. Because most trials can’t perfectly detect every good medication, I’ll assume my tests have a statistical ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Statistics in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Statistics in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Sarah Boslaugh
Statistics for Finance

Statistics for Finance

Erik Lindström, Henrik Madsen, Jan Nygaard Nielsen

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781457189845Errata Page