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Subject: Re: I'm wrong about 10-0 vs 60-40

Author: Walter Koroljow

Date: 14:12:10 02/03/01

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On February 03, 2001 at 12:16:20, Uri Blass wrote:

>On February 03, 2001 at 11:09:02, Walter Koroljow wrote:
>
<snip>

I was glad to see your reply.  We agree on many things.

>>Let We = win expectancy of player A.  Then the simplest hypotheses
>>to use are:
>>
>>H0: We >= 0.5
>>H1: We <  0.5.
>>
>>If we reject H0, we necessarily accept H1. B is the better player at the
>>confidence level of our test.
>
>I know statistics but the probability of 97% (when there is a 97% confidence) is
>the probability to accept H0 when We=0.5
>
>3% is the probability for error when We=0.5.
>If We>0.5 the probability for error is even smaller so 3% is an upper bound for
>the probability of an error but it is an upper bound when H0 is correct and this
>model does not happen because often H1 is correct.

Absolutely right, except for one thing -- when H1 is correct, it is correct to
reject H0 (with H0 and H1 defined as they are above).  In fact, if we knew that
H1 occurred 50% of the time, we could say the error rate bound on false
acceptance of H1 (false rejection of H0) was 1.5%, since H1 is automatically
true half the time.

>
>I think the interesting question is what is the probability that H1 is correct
>after knowing the result and the level of confidence does not give an answer for
>it.

Yes, this is true.  But a bound is a useful result.  I think Amir's calculation
is arithmetically correct and very useful.  He will not lose much money doing
such calculations!

>
>You can say that you do not do the error of rejecting H0 when H0 is correct in
>at least 97% of the cases.

True, but I would say (see the argument above) that we do not need the condition
that H0 is correct to make that statement.

>
>If you reject H0 often then it means that you are right in rejecting H0 in most
>of the cases that you decide to reject H0.
>
>For example if you reject H0 in 50% of the cases that you test hypothesis then
>you can say that the probability that H0 is wrong when you reject H0 is at least
>94%.
>
>If you do not reject H0 often and Reject it only in 3% of the cases then it is
>possible that you always make the wrong decision when you decide that H0 is
>right when always We=0.5

I could not understand the last two paragraphs.  How can it be a wrong decision
to accept H0 when We = 0.5?  I suspect there is a language problem here.


>
>>
>>If we choose, as hypotheses:
>>
>>H0: We = 0.5
>>H1: We (not =) 0.5,
>>
>>then rejecting H0 does show the players are unequal, but does not say who the
>>better player is.
>>
>>By the way, your argument using Bayes' theorem in another post is quite right,
>>but not useful for computation as I am sure you know.
>
>I think that it can be useful for computation but the computation is more
>complicated.
>
>  One has to assume a value
>>for win probability to begin with.
>
>It is possible to assume an aprior distribution for win probability to begin
>with and this assumption is more logical.
>
>Unfortunately this is not the way that I learned to test hypothesis in
>university because people prefer to do the things more simple and not to answer
>the interesting questions.

Assuming an a priori distribution and either arguing for its validity or doing a
parametric study to see how the results vary with distribution would be very
interesting.  But that would satisfy almost none of the people who just want to
know whether 10-0 or 60-40 is more significant.  Can you imagine trying to
justify a distribution assumption in this forum?  Computing bounds by means of
confidences does provide a reasonable answer to the question.

I passionately agree that most interesting questions are usually not addressed.
It is strange that that was the way in school.  By the way, at work, our
best-working military algorithms are Bayesian and they assume a priori
distributions...

It usually takes me a while to reply.

Walter

>
>Uri
>>
>>Cheers,
>>
>>Walter



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