[Air-L] A question for researchers interested in the basics of statistical inference

[Ben Anderson]

and something I forgot to say...

>
> 2. the analysis. You can certainly do things like regression  
> analysis with your sample. The 'statistical significance' simply  
> tells you how confident you can be that any statistical effect is  
> real (i.e. non random) for the sample.

in most situations it's recommended to look at confidence intervals  
not just p values because they tell you the estimated maximum and  
minimum size of the effect/difference given your chosen probability  
level. Just because an effect is statistically significant doesn't  
mean it's either large or important :-)

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/292/6522/746 is a good place  
to start.

Ben