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Statistical Thinking
Statistical inference in one sentence
Every hypothesis test — from STAT101 to your scariest PhD qualifying exams — boils down to one sentence. It’s the big insight of the 1920s that gave birth to most of the statistical pursuits you encounter in the wild today. You can derive our discipline from it, so if you want to understand statistics, graffiti this sentence at eye-level and meditate on it daily.
Enough preamble! Here’s the magical incantation itself:
“Does the evidence that we collected make our null hypothesis look ridiculous?”
I’m not kidding; that’s all there is to it. Classical hypothesis testing is this. Every. Single. Time. Seeing it stripped of its teeth and claws might even feel like a letdown for those of you carrying around STAT101 scars. Others of you might be struggling to make heads or tails of it, so let’s look at a gentle example. If this example isn’t gentle enough, read this one instead.
Hypothesis testing with aliens
You’ve just been selected for the ultimate adventure: searching planets for…
