Sander Greenland recently published a paper with a very clear and thoughtful exposition on why causality, logic and context need full consideration in any statistical analysis, even strictly descriptive or predictive analysis. For instance, in the concluding section – “Statistical science (as opposed to mathematical statistics) involves far more than data – it requires realistic […]
Archive of entries posted by
Everything that can be said can be said clearly.
The title as many may know, is a quote from Wittgenstein. It is one that has haunted me for many years. As a first year undergrad, I had mistakenly enrolled in a second year course that was almost entirely based on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Alarmingly, the drop date had passed before I grasped I was supposed […]
Rethinking Rob Kass’ recent talk on science in a less statistics-centric way.
Reflection on a recent post on a talk by Rob Kass’ has lead me to write this post. I liked the talk very much and found it informative. Perhaps especially for it’s call to clearly distinguish abstract models from brute force reality. I believe that is a very important point that has often been lost […]
Some possibly different experiences of being a statistician working with an international collaborative research group like OHDSI.
This post is by Keith O’Rourke and as with all posts and comments on this blog, is just a deliberation on dealing with uncertainties in scientific inquiry and should not to be attributed to any entity other than the author. Starting at the end of March, I thought it would be good idea to let […]
Somethings do not seem to spread easily – the role of simulation in statistical practice and perhaps theory.
Unlike Covid19, somethings don’t seem to spread easily and the role of simulation in statistical practice (and perhaps theory) may well be one of those. In a recent comment, Andrew provided a link to an interview about the new book Regression and Other Stories by Aki Vehtari, Andrew Gelman, and Jennifer Hill. An interview that covered […]
Update on OHDSI Covid19 Activities.
I have been providing some sense of the ongoing activities of the OHDSI group working on Covid19. In particular, this gives a quick sense of one of the newer activities: I believe there is a lot of studying to be done yet…
More than one, always more than one to address the real uncertainty.
The OHDSI study-a-thon group has a pre-print An international characterisation of patients hospitalised with COVID-19 and a comparison with those previously hospitalised with influenza. What is encouraging with this one over yesterday’s study, is multiple data sources and almost too many co-authors to count (take that Nature’s editors). So an opportunity to see the variation […]
Usual channels of clinical research dissemination getting somewhat clogged: What can go wrong – does.
A few weeks ago I was an observer on the OHDSI Covid19 study-a-thon (March 26 – 29). Four days of intensive collaboration among numerous clinical researchers working with previously established technology to enable high quality research with data access up to 500 million patients. Current status here. This is a good summary of what happened: […]
Update: OHDSI COVID-19 study-a-thon.
Thought a summary in the read below section might be helpful as the main page might be a lot to digest. The OHDSI Covid 19 group re-convenes at 6:00 (EST I think) Monday for updates. For those who want to do modelling, you cannot get the data but must write analysis scripts that data holders […]
And the band played on: Low quality studies being published on Covid19 prediction.
According to Laure Wynants et al Systematic review and critical appraisal of prediction models for diagnosis and prognosis of COVID-19 infection most of the recent published studies on prediction of Covid19 are of rather low quality. Information is desperately needed but not misleading information :-( Conclusion: COVID-19 related prediction models for diagnosis and prognosis are […]
OHDSI COVID-19 study-a-thon.
The OHDSI COVID-19 study-a-thon started early on Thursday morning – 3 am for me. The wrap up session – of the START of the Odyssey that needs to continue – will be available at 7 pm eastern time / EDT. This will give anyone who might be able to contribute to a world wide collaboration to […]
We need to practice our best science hygiene.
Of course I am not referring to hand-washing and social distancing but rather heightened social interactions between those now engaged or who can get engaged in trying to get less wrong about Covid19. That is, being open about one’s intentions (the purpose of the effort), one’s methods and one’s data and data sources. For instance […]
Just some numbers from Canada
One of my colleagues posted this link yesterday to a shiny app giving Covid19 testing and results for all provinces in Canada. Seems to match all other sources I have heard from. About 43,000 tests and 600 positive. The cumulative graphs of cases by province indicates Alberta is currently having the fastest increases. Hopefully the […]
Attempts at providing helpful explanations of statistics must avoid instilling misleading or harmful notions: ‘Statistical significance just tells us whether or not something definitely does or definitely doesn’t cause cancer’
This post is by Keith O’Rourke and as with all posts and comments on this blog, is just a deliberation on dealing with uncertainties in scientific inquiry and should not to be attributed to any entity other than the author. As with any critically-thinking inquirer, the views behind these deliberations are always subject to rethinking […]
A Bayesian view of data augmentation.
This post is by Keith O’Rourke and as with all posts and comments on this blog, is just a deliberation on dealing with uncertainties in scientific inquiry and should not to be attributed to any entity other than the author. As with any critically-thinking inquirer, the views behind these deliberations are always subject to rethinking […]
Zombie semantics spread in the hope of keeping most on the same low road you are comfortable with now: Delaying the hardship of learning better methodology.
This post is by Keith O’Rourke and as with all posts and comments on this blog, is just a deliberation on dealing with uncertainties in scientific inquiry and should not to be attributed to any entity other than the author. As with any critically-thinking inquirer, the views behind these deliberations are always subject to rethinking […]
Filling/emptying the half empty/full glass of profitable science: Different views on retiring versus retaining thresholds for statistical significance.
This post is by Keith O’Rourke and as with all posts and comments on this blog, is just a deliberation on dealing with uncertainties in scientific inquiry and should not to be attributed to any entity other than the author. As with any critically-thinking inquirer, the views behind these deliberations are always subject to rethinking […]
The virtue of fake universes: A purposeful and safe way to explain empirical inference.
This post is by Keith O’Rourke and as with all posts and comments on this blog, is just a deliberation on dealing with uncertainties in scientific inquiry and should not to be attributed to any entity other than the author. As with any critically-thinking inquirer, the views behind these deliberations are always subject to rethinking […]
Brief summary notes on Statistical Thinking for enabling better review of clinical trials.
This post is by Keith O’Rourke and as with all posts and comments on this blog, is just a deliberation on dealing with uncertainties in scientific inquiry and should not to be attributed to any entity other than the author. As with any critically-thinking inquirer, the views behind these deliberations are always subject to rethinking […]
Explainable ML versus Interpretable ML
This post is by Keith O’Rourke and as with all posts and comments on this blog, is just a deliberation on dealing with uncertainties in scientific inquiry and should not to be attributed to any entity other than the author. As with any critically-thinking inquirer, the views behind these deliberations are always subject to rethinking […]