[R] OT: A philosophical question about statistics

[Kevin Zembower]

TIm, thanks for replying to my questions. I really value your insights
in areas of statistics (small sample sizes, agricultural statistics)
that are unique.

The use of one method or technique to check the other was not one I had
thought of. The idea that if one technique, correctly applied, could
yield results different from the other technique, and that this could
lead to insight into the assumptions of a problem that might be in
error, is a powerful idea. Thank you for that.

Thanks, again, for your contribution to my questions.

-Kevin

On Mon, 2025-05-05 at 17:12 +0000, Ebert,Timothy Aaron wrote:
> (adding slightly to Gregg's answer)
> Why do professionals use both? Computer intensive methods (bootstrap,
> randomization, jackknife) are data hungry. They do not work well if I
> have a sample size of 4. One could argue that the traditional methods
> also have trouble, but one could also think of the traditional
> approach as assuming unobserved values. Assuming that the true
> distribution is represented by my 4 observations then ... 
>    Computer intensive approaches have not been readily available
> until the invention of widely available faster computers. There is a
> large body of information and long experience with the traditional
> methods in all scientific disciplines. If you are unfamiliar with
> these approaches, then you may not fully understand that key paper
> published 30 years ago.
>    We like to think we have "the answer" but there are times where
> the answer we get depends on how we ask the question. The different
> tests ask the same question in different ways. Does the answer for
> your data change depending on what approach is used? If so, then what
> assumption or which test is problematic and why? 
> 
> Tim