Review of the Philosophy of Data Analysis

Modern thought in statistics is that we should be wary of how we deal with p-values. We talk about "significance" in statistics as if it means "important" when actually it doesn't. You can get a significant difference or correlation that is meaningless either because you are asking a silly question or because the difference doesn't actually mean anything in the real world. In this essay I want you to explore the use of p-values in statistics and come to your own conclusion about its value to research, science and the world generally. The aim of the task is to give you a deeper understanding of the philosophy of statistical analysis.