Archive for October 2016

Accuracy, Readability, and Mplus

The idea to create an algorithm that automatically scans scientific articles for the results of common statistical tests and evaluates the accuracy of these results seems straight-forward. Statcheck performs this, well, stat check. Now a lot of available papers have been automatically evaluated and the outcomes were posted on PubPeer.

So far, none of the (two) papers on pubpeer I co-authored raised an error flag. That’s reassuring. I went and (stat)checked my other publications, and behold: There was indeed an inconsistency in one of them. In Schult et al. (2016) I reported “chi-square(33) = 59.11, p = .004″. Statcheck expected p = .003. The cause of this discrepancy is the rounding of rounded results. The Mplus output showed a chi-square value of 59.109 and a p value of 0.0035. I rounded both values to make the results more readable, accepting that, for example, a value such as 0.00347something would be mistakenly rounded to 0.004 instead of 0.003. For the record: Whenever a test statistic’s p value is close to the chosen alpha level, I do use all available decimal places to evaluate the decision of statistical significance. Of course, I could just report all available digits all the time. Still, that smells of pseudo-accuracy, plus I like to think that I write for human readers, not for computer algorithms.

What’s the take home message here? I won’t be surprised when this error/discrepancy/inconsistency (what’s in a name?) is discovered and posted by the big machine. I will keep writing my papers with care, double-checking the results etc. (something my senior authors always condoned and enforced). And did I mention that I put replication materials online (unless privacy/copyright laws or, sadly, busyness prevent me from doing so)?

Jutze live in Waiblingen

Ich spielte am 18. Oktober in Waiblingen im Kulturhaus Schwanen bei der dortigen Open Stage einige 52-Sekunden-Lieder. Den gesamten Auftritt gibt es nun zum Runterladen und Nachhören. Falls das wen interessiert. Neun Minuten Kurzeweile mit einer Ansage und den folgenden Liedern:

  1. Einkaufszettel
  2. Konrad
  3. Fremde Leute
  4. Tapirlied
  5. 79 Jahre
  6. Reis

Jutze spielt am Dienstag in Waiblingen

Am kommenden Dienstag (18. Oktober) spiele ich im Schwanen in Waiblingen ein paar 52-Sekunden-Lieder. Kommt! Weitere Infos sind hier.