Bayesian Estimation of Partial Correlations

Correlations are a popular analysis tool in psychology to examine the extent to which two variables are related. For example, one might be interested in whether there is a relationship between shoe size and height. But what if you want to explore the relationship between two variables whilst controlling for the effects of a third …

Advertisement

Reproducibility Article in “The Conversation”

I was asked to write 200-300 words on my views on whether there is a reproducibility crisis in the sciences for an article that was appearing in The Conversation. I was so passionate about what I was writing that I ended up writing over 1,200 words. The final article was, of course, edited down by …

Low Power & Effect Sizes

Yesterday I posted the following tweet which has since turned out to be my most popular tweet EVER with hundreds of retweets and "likes" in 24 hours: https://twitter.com/JimGrange/status/838436187144605696 My motivation for the tweet was quite straightforward. I have recently been emailing academics in my department every week with different topics in an attempt to raise …

The Polls Weren’t Wrong

TL;DR: Trump had a 28% chance to win. We shouldn't be surprised he won. I'm not going to comment on the political outcome of last week's US Presidential elections; enough ink---both pen-ink and eye-ink---has been spilled about that. What I am going to comment on though is the growing feeling the polls were wrong, and …

Replication Crisis: What Changes Have your Department Made?

It's been a year since the Open Science Collaboration's publication on "Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science" was published in Science. It has been cited 515 times since publication, and has been met with much discussion on social networks. I am interested in what changes your psychology department have made since. Are staff actively encouraged …

Do Olympic Hosts Have a “Home-Field” Advantage?

My wife questioned in passing yesterday whether summer Olympic hosts have a home-field advantage; that is, do the hosts generally win more medals in their hosting year than in their non-hosting years? That a home-field advantage exists in many team sports is generally not disputed—see for example this excellent blog post by the Freakonomics team. But is this …

Solution to #BarBarPlots in R

I came across an interesting project the other day which is calling for a reconsideration of the use of bar plots (#barbarplots), with the lovely tag-line "Friends don't let friends make bar plots!". The project elegantly outlines convincing reasons why bar plots can be misleading, and have successfully funded a campaign to "...increase awareness of the …

10 Recommendations from the Reproducibility Crisis in Psychological Science

This week I gave an internal seminar at my institution (Keele University, UK) entitled "Ten Recommendations from the Reproducibility Crisis in Psychological Science". The audience was to be faculty members and psychology graduate students. My aim was to collate some of the "best-practices" that have emerged over the past few years and provide direct advice …

“Bayesian in 8 Easy Steps” Journal Club

I've been trying to organise an online journal club to discuss the papers suggested in Alexander Etz and colleagues' paper "How to become a Bayesian in 8 easy steps". Several people have filled out the Doodle poll expressing an interest, but unfortunately not everyone can make the same time. As such, I am afraid I …

(Pesky?) Priors

When I tell people I am learning Bayesian statistics, I tend to get one of two responses: either people look at me blankly---"What's Bayesian statistics?"---or I get scorned for using such "loose" methods---"Bayesian analysis is too subjective!"1. This latter "concern" arises due to (what I believe to be a misunderstanding of) the prior: Bayesian analysis …