Statistical significance is an essential but confusing concept. As I’ve discussed in this space before, statistical significance fundamentally concerns the chance that a given quantitative result is the product of random chance, of variability that’s inherent to real-world numbers. (Update: Better — the odds that we’d observe the given result, or a more extreme result, simply […]
Continue reading →As in many other aspects of my intellectual life, when it comes to educational assessment I often play two contradicting roles, depending on my immediate audience. Speaking as someone whose primary scholarly interest is writing assessment, in the academy I’m surrounded by many people who are invested in the traditional values of the humanities, qualitative […]
Continue reading →At the beginning of this chat I had with Noah Millman, you’ll note my caveat: I speak as a dedicated but decidedly amateur student of artificial intelligence. Noah makes a similar announcement. I was thrilled to be invited by him to discuss issues of the philosophy and theory of knowledge of AI, and I had […]
Continue reading →I’m drawing close to completing and defending my dissertation. I’m going to write up some stuff about it soon, as I genuinely think there’s some interesting things for people who are interested in educational policy in there. (You may roll your eyes if you choose.) Briefly, though, I want to say a quick word about […]
Continue reading →Like a lot of terms that get bandied around, it’s not always clear what “data journalism” means, but I’ll risk the potential for being a bit vague and assume that most people know what I’m talking about. We’ve seen a rapid growth in the use of arguments based on statistics in the popular media in […]
Continue reading →Whenever I get into these correlation and causation battles (and I do frequently, both in the university and online), they seem to go wrong in two ways: one, people often insist on an entirely unhelpful definition of the word “implies,” and two, people often presume some quantitative signifier of absolute causation that does not exist in […]
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