Title text:
The plural of anecdote may not be data, but the singular of data is anecdote.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3262/
Title text:
The plural of anecdote may not be data, but the singular of data is anecdote.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3262/
It took a while to parse this comic, but with the explanation it’s probably much easier to understand for anyone who doesn’t know what P-hacking is.
Reduce the sample size by increasing qualifying parameters until you find a dataset that matches your hypothesis in such a way that the research grant will be approved.
Sometimes even worse, which is to collect a raft of data testing one hypothesis, and then realize it all came up empty, and so go looking for any data you can form a new hypothesis from that matches the data you already have.
https://xkcd.com/882/ This, but done retrospectively
One thing you can use p-hacking for is that if you want to prove vaccines are bad, give a bunch of kids vaccines and measure 20 different vital indicators. Then theorise that the vital indicator which got worse was caused by the vaccines.
Thanks for that. I’d never heard the term before.
It sounds a little subjective though? Are there features that can be used to quantity how “P-Hacky” something is?
I feel like a sports state of “a team tends to lose if thier top scoring player in the first quarter is injured before the end of the first half” has a lot of specific weirdness, but my intuition drives that this specifically could be a very legitimate observation.
How do you draw the line?