Statistical Inference: Theory and Practice: 17 (Theory and Decision Library B, 17) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0792307186 ISBN 13: 9780792307181

Publisher: Springer, 1991

Synopsis

Use and misuse of statistics seems to be the signum temporis of past decades. But nowadays this practice seems slowly to be wearing away, and common sense and responsibility recapturing their position. It is our contention that little by little statistics should return to its starting point, i.e., to formalizing and analyzing empirical phenomena. This requires the reevalu­ ation of many traditions and the rejection of many myths. We hope that our book would go some way towards this aim. We show the sharp conflict between what is needed and what is feasible. Moreover, we show how slender are the links between theory and practice in statistical inference, links which are sometimes no more than mutual inspiration. In Part One we present the consecutive stages of formalization of statistical problems, i.e., the description of the experiment, the presentation of the aim of the investigation, and of the constraints put upon the decision rules. We stress the fact that at each of these stagesthere is room for arbitrariness. We prove that the links between the real problem and its formal counterpart are often so weak that the solution of the formal problem may have no rational interpretation at the practical level. We give a considerable amount of thought to the reduction of statistical problems.

About this title

Synopsis

Translated from the 1988 Polish edition, deals with a selection of ideas about statistical inference, particularly the problems of observability and of reducing information on empirical phenomena. Much attention is paid to the tenuous link between simple and elegant theories decision-making, discriminant analysis, screening, etc. and the intricacie

Edition details

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0792307186
• ISBN 13: 9780792307181
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Bromek Tadeusz, Pleszczynska Elzbieta