A p-value: What does it mean, really?

statspecialist.com http://www.statspecialist.com/blog/a-p-value-what-does-it-mean-really/ Statistics Specialist A p-value; what does it mean really? On several occasions I have been approached by students and researchers to “help them get a p-value for... More

statspecialist.com http://www.statspecialist.com/blog/a-p-value-what-does-it-mean-really/ Statistics Specialist A p-value; what does it mean really? On several occasions I have been approached by students and researchers to “help them get a p-value for their results”. They believed that the purpose of an analysis was to dig this value from the data otherwise the analysis would be incomplete. Sir Ronald Fisher, a British statistician and geneticist, introduced the p-value in 1925. This was around the time when he was developing computational algorithms for analyzing data from his balanced experimental designs. He wrapped up his work in his first book, Statistical Methods for Research Workers. The book went through many editions and translation over time, and later became the standard reference work for scientists in many disciplines. At the time he assumed 0.05 as a reference point for rejecting a null hypothesis but not as a sharp cut off. Fisher’s philosophy of significan Less