Sense and Nonsense of Statistical Inference

This volume focuses on the abuse of statistical inference in scientific and statistical literature as well as in a variety of other sources presenting examples of misused statistics to show that many scientists and statisticians are unaware of or unwilling to challenge the chaotic state of statistical practices.;The book: provides examples of ubiquitous statistical tests taken from the biomedical and behavioural sciences economics and the statistical literature; discusses conflicting views of randomization emphasizing certain aspects of induction and epistemology; reveals fallacious practices in statistical causal inference stressing the misuse of regression models and time-series analysis as instant formulas to draw causal relationships; treats constructive uses of statistics such as a modern version of Fisher's puzzle Bayesian analysis Shewhart control chart descriptive statistics chi-square test nonlinear modeling spectral estimation and Markov processes in quality control.