When a speaker states an argument in arguing—in its core sense—for the conclusion, asserts, as opposed to merely implies or implicates, associated inference claim effect that conclusion follows from premises. In defense of this, I argue how is conveyed when stating constrained by constitutive and normative conditions for cases speech arguing conclusion. The act assertion better reflects such th...

Skepticism about the assumption of no unmeasured confounding, also known as exchangeability, is often warranted in making causal inferences from observational data; because exchangeability hinges on an investigator’s ability to accurately measure covariates that capture all potential sources confounding. In practice, most one can hope for covariate measurements are at best proxies true underlyi...

We propose a method for constructing confidence intervals that account many forms of spatial correlation. The interval has the familiar “estimator plus and minus standard error times critical value” form, but we new methods value. is constructed using population principal components from given “worst‐case” correlation model. value chosen to ensure coverage in benchmark parametric model correlat...

Key to effective generic, or “black-box,” variational inference is the selection of an approximation target density that balances accuracy and speed. Copula models are promising options, but calibration can be slow for some choices. Smith, Loaiza-Maya, Nott (2020 M. S., R., Nott, D. J. (2020), “High-Dimensional Variational Approximation through Transformation,” Journal Computational Graphical S...

Statistical distances, divergences, and similar quantities have an extensive history play important role in the statistical related scientific literature. This shows up estimation, where we often use estimators based on minimizing a distance. Distances also prominent hypothesis testing model selection. We review properties of distances that are used work, present their properties, show how they...

The International Society of Physiotherapy Journal Editors (ISPJE) recently published an editorial warning that many their journals would soon prohibit the use null hypothesis tests and instead require authors to interpret 95% confidence intervals relative clinically important values. Although I encourage reporting discussing uncertainty in context a research question, ISPJE’s proposed ban is i...