Zen and the art of reporting differences in data that are not statistically significant

摘要

Professional communicators reporting the results of experiments often need to express the fact that the differences in the data were not statistically significant and that the null hypothesis could not be rejected. It is suggested that communicators may find it difficult to express these results partly because failing to reject a null hypothesis is not the same as accepting a null hypothesis. Writers may report failing to reject a null hypothesis in any of five ways: directly and briefly; directly with the exact level of statistical probability stated; directly with the confidence interval specified; directly with an explanation of not claiming causation; and directly with a discussion of possible reasons.