The Epistemology of Statistical Science

摘要

Despite the title, this is a book written by a statistician for statisticians. Epistemology concerns issues in the creation and dissemination of knowledge; more specifically, it is the study of knowledge and justified belief (Steup 2011). It can include statistical inference, but Van Aarde distinguishes his approach as epistemology rather than statistical inference because he believes that all the current approaches to statistical inference are flawed. He argues that a key flaw (which leads to simultaneous inference) is the inclusion of a 'knowing subject' who chooses cutoff values 'without reference to the data' and applies them and probability statements to make inferences (including possibly incorrect ones). He advocates instead an approach based on co-ordination tests that does not allow simultaneous inference.