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 ‘Look inside’ 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.
- 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 »
- What Psychology Teachers Should Know About Open Science and the New Statistics - Bob recently tweeted about this great paper of his, with Beth Morling: Morling, B., & Calin-Jageman, R. J., (2020). What Psychology Teachers Should Know About Open Science and the New Statistics. Teaching of Psychology, 47 (2), 169-179. doi: 10.1177/0098628320901372 First, here's the overview diagram, a great teaching explainer in itself: I… …
What Psychology Teachers Should Know About Open Science and the New Statistics Read More »
- A Tribute to Wayne Velicer - Wayne Velicer was a giant among quantitative psychologists and health researchers, among other groups. I was very fortunate to be able to call him a colleague and good friend. Sadly, he died too young, in October 2017. The journal Multivariate Behavioral Research has just published online-before-print a tribute to Wayne.… …
- Teaching in the New Era of Psychological Science - A great collection of articles in the latest issue of PLAT. Contents page here. At that page, click to see the abstract of any article. A big shout out to the wonderful editorial team that assembled this special issue: Susan A. Nolan (Seton Hall University, USA), Tamarah Smith (Gwynedd Mercy… …
Teaching in the New Era of Psychological Science Read More »
- Bushfires and Open Science: A View From Australia - Our Family Summer in a Time of Fires We're just back home after a couple of weeks at the big old family beach house. We had one stinking hot day, 40+ degrees, but, strangely, other days were cool to cold, usually with strong swirly winds. So different from the long… …
Bushfires and Open Science: A View From Australia Read More »
- Banishing “Black/White Thinking” - eNeuro publishes some teaching guidance You may recall that eNeuro published a great editorial and a supporting paper by Bob and me--mainly Bob. Info is here. It has now published a lovely article giving teaching advice about ways to undermine students' natural tendency to think dichotomously. If I could wave… …
- Farewell and Thanks Steve Lindsay - Psychological Science, the journal, has for years pushed hard for publication of better, more trustworthy research. First there was the leadership of Eric Eich, then Steve Lindsay energetically took the baton. Steve is about to finish, no doubt to his great relief. His 'swan song' editorial has just come online,… …
- NeuRA Ahead of the Open Science Curve - I had great fun yesterday visiting NeuRA (Neuroscience Research Australia), a large research institute in Sydney. I was hosted by Simon Gandevia, Deputy Director, who has been a long-time proponent of Open Science and The New Statistics. Neura's Research Quality page describes the quality goals they have adopted, at the initiative… …
- I Join an RCT: A View From the Other Side - In ITNS we discuss randomized control trials (RCTs) and I've taught about them since whenever. If done well, they should provide gold standard evidence about the benefits and harms of a therapy. So I was particularly interested to be invited to join a large RCT. My wife, Lindy, and I… …