Welcome
Welcome to the ITNS blog, our internet home designed to help students, teachers, and others get the 
most out of Introduction to the New Statistics. For more information about the book, see the publisher’s page for ITNS here. At that page, click ‘Preview this title’ to see the Contents, Preface, and Chapter 1 in full.
What will you find here?
- Blog posts from Geoff and Bob with musings and new articles related to the New Statistics and Open Science
- Information about the first book, Understanding the New Statistics
- Previous versions of ESCI: Use the ‘ESCI’ tab at the top of this page
Looking for instructor resources? These are on the publisher’s companion website for the book here.
Are you a student looking to download ESCI, data sets, flashcards, or other resources? These are on the publisher’s companion website for the book here.
- Goodies from Gordon: ‘distributions’, ‘d picture’, ‘correlation’–all part of ‘esci web’ - I'm delighted to say we're releasing three new goodies from Gordon Moore: distributions, d picture, and correlation. These follow his wonderful dances introduced here. As I explained, ITNS2 will be accompanied by Bob’s data analysis software, esci, in R, and Gordon’s web-based simulations and tools, all of which are based on, and… …
Goodies from Gordon: ‘distributions’, ‘d picture’, ‘correlation’–all part of ‘esci web’ Read More »
- “Which of the Books Should I Buy?” - ...as I was asked recently. A question every author loves to hear. The short answer is ITNS, preferably to be followed by ITNS2, coming in 2021 we hope. Here's an overview: ITNS, second edition, due 2021 Main changes from the first edition: fabulous new software: esci (in R) for data… …
- A Confidence Interval for the Diamond Ratio: Estimation of Heterogeneity in Meta-Analysis - A while back I posted (here) about the Diamond Ratio (DR), which is our simple visual indicator of the extent of heterogeneity in meta-analysis. (See ITNS, Chapter 9 for more on the DR.) I reported that Max Cairns, a PhD student in statistics at La Trobe University, and his supervisor Luke… …
- Gordon’s ‘dances’: Vivid Simulations Bring Statistical Ideas Alive - Bob and I are delighted to welcome Gordon Moore who joins us in working on the second edition of ITNS. Gordon, an independent tutor in computing, statistics and mathematics, is based in England, so our ITNS2 team of three now spans three continents. We are now releasing Gordon’s dances in… …
Gordon’s ‘dances’: Vivid Simulations Bring Statistical Ideas Alive Read More »
- Reminder: Significance Roulette Still Tells Us a p Value Can’t be Trusted - An appreciative comment on YouTube reminds me I haven't mentioned Significance Roulette for a while, yet its message that a p value can't be trusted remains as relevant as ever. Dance of the p Values The dance of the p values was my first go at making vivid the amazingly… …
Reminder: Significance Roulette Still Tells Us a p Value Can’t be Trusted Read More »
- Fiona’s Take on Richie’s New Book: ‘Science Fictions–How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype…’ - I haven't read this book--it won't reach here for a while--but Fiona has written a critique that's certainly worth reading. Out this week in Nature, you can find her assessment here. From Fiona's review: "Together with his overview of the replication crisis, this introduction would be useful for undergraduates or… …
- Designing an R interface and dealing with S3 “classes”… any suggestions? - I (Bob) am spending some of this summer working on the esci package for R. I've got a rough draft cobbled together, but now I want to go back through to make a beautiful, maintainable codebase. Most importantly, I want to design and name the functions to provide an interface… …
Designing an R interface and dealing with S3 “classes”… any suggestions? Read More »
- An Emotion-Enhanced Forest Plot - Thanks to Steve Lindsay Sometimes, of course, we can be delighted to find evidence that an effect is zero-to-negligible. ...as if good Open Science researchers would ever let their emotions intrude on their work.Geoff …
- 3 Easy Ways to Obtain Cohen’s d and its CI - [Update 7/4/2020 - Added reference to preprint on Cohen's d for paired designs and put code in an actual code block] Lots of research questions boil down to estimating the difference between two means (Mdiff = Mgroup_of_interest - Mreference_group). This is the 'raw score' effect size--it reports the difference between… …
- Bob’s Latest Estimation Workshop a Hit - Bob has tweeted, but it's worth a quick post. His 90 min new-statistics zoomfest was part of SIPS2020. More than 100 folks, almost all staying to the end. Excited and positive chat all the way through. Yes, a 5am start for me, but worth it. Materials, including slides, are at… …
- Will that result replicate? Contribute some judgments to Fiona’s repliCATS project - Just had an update about Fiona's big project to study how well researchers can judge the chance that some result can be replicated. She and the team are doing well, but need a last push during July to meet their target. Consider signing up to make a few judgments (and… …
Will that result replicate? Contribute some judgments to Fiona’s repliCATS project Read More »
- eNeuro Keeps Up the Good Work on Estimation - Update: The great figures below were produced using the wonderful Estimation Statistics package. See also Ho, et al. (2019). Back in August Bob posted (here) about eNeuro's great initiative to encourage authors to use estimation. The latest eNeuro email update reports how the journal is keeping up the good work.… …
- Resources from SFN’s “Ask an Expert” event on power and estimation - On 6/4/2020 the Society for Neuroscience (SFN) hosted an an "Ask and Expert" online webinar on power and estimation. Short presentations on the topic were first posted here as a catalyst to generate questions and comments to discuss during a live session. This post is just to organize links and… …
Resources from SFN’s “Ask an Expert” event on power and estimation Read More »
- The esci module for jamovi - Below is the post we wrote for the jamovi blog about the new esci module. For this site, the main page with details on the modules is here: https://thenewstatistics.com/itns/esci/jesci/ -------- Post for the jamovi blog--------------- Today there's a new module available in jamovi: esci (effect sizes and confidence intervals), developed… …
- JAMA Opposes p<.05 Decision Making - A recent viewpoint article (free download) in JAMA argues that decisions should not be based on mere p value criteria, but need "consideration of the outcome in terms of effect size and accompanying CIs, [and] placing the findings from the trial in the context of the totality of the existing… …
- Mega Studies Need Inference by Interval (or: Point Nulls are Especially Pointless when N is Large) - I (Bob) love large-scale collaborative projects (Many Labs, Many Babies, Psych Science Accelerator, etc.). I like the teamwork involved. I like the careful deliberation over study materials. I like the large sample sizes and the hopes of investigating how psychological phenomena vary over labs, languages, and culture. Mega studies aren't… …
- A Cliff at p=.05? Recent Evidence Suggests Yes - In brief: Two studies provide yet more evidence that researchers make poorer interpretations when they focus on statistical significance testing and its .05 threshold. Statisticians make similar errors, although in some situations to a lesser extent than do other researchers. Both statisticians and epidemiologists show, in some situations, clear evidence… …
- The Shape of a Confidence Interval: Cat’s Eye or Plausibility Picture, and What About Cliff? - In brief: Curves picture how likelihood varies across and beyond a CI. Which is better: One curve (plausibility picture) or two (cat's eye)? Which should we use in ITNS2? Curves can discourage dichotomous decision making based on a belief that there's a cliff in strength of evidence at each limit… …
- The ASA and p Values: Here We Go Again - The above announcement is from the February ASA (American Statistical Association) newsletter. (See p. 7 for the announcement and the list of 15 members of the Task Force.) Why won't statistical significance simply whither and die, taking p<.05 and maybe even p values with it? The ASA needs a Task… …
- Not so Difficult? This Parrot ‘Gets’ Statistical Inference - If you have tramped or climbed in New Zealand's high country, as I did for a couple of months many moons ago, you've probably spent hours watching kea exploring or 'playing'. Kea are large parrots with wicked-looking beaks that are highly social, and notorious among mountaineers for their ability to… …
Not so Difficult? This Parrot ‘Gets’ Statistical Inference Read More »