The hit series “Clarkson’s Farm” has Jeremy Clarkson attempt farming, in a highly amusing mix between Mr. Bean, John Cleese in Clockwise, and Pat & Mat. After binge-watching the first three seasons, I was struck by one particular topic: the mass death of the piglets. Clarkson houses his sows in “pigloos” — dome-shaped pig farrowing pens. The first time the…
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TLDR; the video is here. This week the Psychological Methods Lab received an 800,000 euro Ammodo Science Award for groundbreaking research. This award was for our entire Psychological Methods group and allows us to develop our joint Open Science research agenda. The logistics was handled expertly by the Ammodo team, from start to finish. Part of the procedure was a…
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This week I came across an inspired/inspiring article by Jim Berger, “Learning statistics from counterexamples“. This short paper strikes at the very heart of statistics; it seems to me that every statistician (whether young or old, frequentist or Bayesian) ought to have an opinion on the counterexamples — sitting on the fence is not an option. Below I give the…
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“Data analysis is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its mass above water” Adjusted from a quotation incorrectly attributed to Sigmund Freud Preprint: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/edzfj Abstract “The vast majority of empirical research articles feature a single primary analysis outcome that is the result of a single analysis plan, executed by a single analysis team. However, recent multi-analyst projects have…
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WARNING: This post is about chess. If you don’t play chess you might want to skip this post. During a week-long family vacation I engaged obsessively in both the highest and the lowest form of human intellectual activity. Obviously the highest form is chess endgame study composition; the lowest form surely is online “bullet” chess. Miraculously, my bullet chess adventures…
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As regular readers of this blog already know, Bayes factors rule! In practice, however, the calculation of Bayes factors is seriously hampered by computational difficulties. In a new paper, we revive two theorems put forth by Alan Turing and Jack Good and propose a step-by-step approach to use them as a check for the calculation of Bayes factors. According to…
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I am thrilled to report that, after considerable discussion, the University of Amsterdam has agreed to ban the teaching of p-values for first-year students at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. The new policy will take effect at the start of the new academic year, and its introduction was facilitated by the fact that I am taking over from…
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Inspired by a recent article on Ockham’s razor, this post shows how a simple set of polyhedral dice can clarify the basic idea underlying Bayes factors (or likelihood ratios). The ideas may be used in a classroom demonstration, and each of the lessons below could be discovered by the students themselves. Meet the Family Our polyhedral dice are a family…
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