The Invigorating Pleasure of Witnessing a Well-Contested Rat-Fight

Throughout his books, Bayesian godfather Sir Harold Jeffreys was in the habit of starting each chapter with an epigraph. Usually these epigraphs came from different sources, but not so for his 1935 geophysics book “Earthquakes and mountains”. The book has a total of seven chapters; here are the seven associated epigraphs:   For chapter 1, “Solids and Liquids”: …but who…

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A Demon Army in Santiago: Explaining Bayesian Model-Averaging With a Cartoon

Last week I attended the 84th Annual Meeting of the Psychometric Society in Santiago, Chili. Together with Maarten Marsman I taught a JASP workshop on Monday, and then gave a keynote on Tuesday. The keynote was called “Bayesian multi-model inference for practical and impractical problems” and you can find the slides here. Due to poor planning on my side, I…

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If Your First Baby is Early, Will Your Second Baby be Early?

This post was written the week before the birth of our daughter Leanne, who finally decided to make an appearance on Valentine’s Day this year. Nataschja is lying on our sofa, watching a series on Netflix. It is Tuesday afternoon and I am working from home. In fact, I have been working from home for about a week now, awaiting…

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An Inconvenient Truth

On June 6th I gave a one-hour lecture for SIOS, the Student Initiative for Open Science in Amsterdam (you can follow them on Twitter @StudentIOS). The slides are at https://osf.io/5s9uq/, and a YouTube video of the entire lecture is at https://t.co/u7bkqaC6Ko.                                                                                            Abstract This presentation consists of three parts. In the first, I will present a whirlwind tour…

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The Bayesian Methodology of Sir Harold Jeffreys as a Practical Alternative to the P-value Hypothesis Test

This post is an extended synopsis of Ly et al. (2019). The Bayesian methodology of Sir Harold Jeffreys as a practical alternative to the p-value hypothesis test. Preprint available on PsyArXiv: https://psyarxiv.com/dhb7x Abstract Despite an ongoing stream of lamentations, many empirical disciplines still treat the p-value as the sole arbiter to separate the scientific wheat from the chaff. The continued…

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The Principle of Predictive Irrelevance, or Why Intervals Should Not be Used for Model Comparison Featuring a Point Null Hypothesis

This post summarizes Wagenmakers, E.-J., Lee, M. D., Rouder, J. N., & Morey, R. D. (2019). The principle of predictive irrelevance, or why intervals should not be used for model comparison featuring a point null hypothesis. Manuscript submitted for publication. Preprint available on PsyArXiv: https://psyarxiv.com/rqnu5 Abstract The principle of predictive irrelevance states that when two competing models predict a data…

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Preprint: Teaching Good Research Practices: Protocol of a Research Master Course

This post is an extended synopsis of Sarafoglou A., Hoogeveen S., Matzke D., & Wagenmakers, E.-J. (in press). Teaching Good Research Practices: Protocol of a Research Master Course. Preprint available on PsyArXiv: https://psyarxiv.com/gvesh/ Summary The current crisis of confidence in psychological science has spurred on field-wide reforms to enhance transparency, reproducibility, and replicability. To solidify these reforms within the scientific…

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An In-Class Demonstration of Bayesian Inference

This post is an extended synopsis of van Doorn, J. B., Matzke D., & Wagenmakers, E.-J. (in press). An In-Class Demonstration of Bayesian Inference. Psychology Learning and Teaching (https://doi.org/10.1177/14757 25719848574). Preprint available on PsyArXiv:https://psyarxiv.com/d8bvn/ Abstract Over 80 years ago, Sir Ronald Fisher conducted the famous experiment “The Lady Tasting Tea” in order to test whether his colleague, Dr. Muriel Bristol,…

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