Now that the emotional storm following the American Statistical Association’s statement on p-values is slowing down (is it? was there even a storm outside of the statistics area?), let’s think about a practical issue. One that greatly influences data analysis in most fields: statistical software. Statistical software influences which methods are used and how they are reported. Software companies thus affect entire disciplines and how they progress and communicate.
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Star notation for p-value thresholds in statistical software |
No matter whether your field uses SAS, SPSS (now IBM), STATA, or another statistical software package, you’re likely to have seen the star notation (this isn’t about hotel ratings). One star (*) means p-value<0.05, two stars (**) mean p-value<0.01, and three stars (***) mean p-value<0.001.
According to the ASA statement, p-values are not the source of the problem, but rather their discretization. The ASA recommends:
“P-values, when used, would be reported as values, rather than inequalities (p = .0168, rather than p < 0.05). Indeed, we envision there being better recognition that measurement of the strength of evidence really is continuous, rather than discrete.”
This statement is a strong signal to the statistical software companies: continuing to use the star notation, even if your users are addicted to them, is in violation of the ASA recommendation. Will we be seeing any change soon?