Understanding statistics—“Is there a significant difference?”

Understanding environmentally significant consumption.

Consumer choices can have major impacts on the environment. For example, the United States could reduce its total greenhouse gas emissions by 7% through modest policies to encourage more efficient household energy consumption (1). This “behavioral wedge” would make a substantial and low-cost contribution to climate-change mitigation (2, 3). Shifts in water and food consumption would also be env...

Systems and Processes – Is There a Difference ?

Abstract At a time when we are more conscious than ever before of the interconnectedness of our actions we are still publishing international standards that ignore the advances made in system theory and process management since the 1950s. David Hoyle author of the ISO 9000 Quality Systems Handbook, shows that we are rooted in the past using standards that promote unhelpful models of systems and...

Ground versus earth, there is a difference.

Investigations of injuries and fires caused by electrical circuits and equipment can result in incorrect conclusions when grounding systems are neglected. The term ground is loosely used in electrical jargon as any zero reference point for voltage measurement. Power systems are usually grounded to the earth. Other electrical systems are sometimes grounded to the same earth through a low impedan...

Is There a Significant Difference in Acute Kidney Injury Incidence Among Patients Treated with Vancomycin Combined with Cefepime or Meropenem?

The Difference between "Significant" and "Not Significant" Is Not Itself Statistically Significant

It is common to summarize statistical comparisons by declarations of statistical significance or non-significance. Here we discuss one problem with such declarations, namely that changes in statistical significance are often not themselves statistically significant. By this, we are not merely making the commonplace observation that any particular threshold is arbitrary—for example, only a small...