Ranald Macdonald and statistical inference

摘要

Ranald Roderick Macdonald (1945-2007) was an important contributor tomathematical psychology in the UK, as a referee and action editor for British Journalof Mathematical and Statistical Psychology and as a participant and organizer at the BritishPsychological Society's Mathematics, statistics and computing section meetings. Thisappreciation argues that his most important contribution was to the foundations ofsignificance testing, where his concern about what information was relevant ininterpreting the results of significance tests led him to be a persuasive advocate for the'Weak Fisherian' form of hypothesis testing.