The Bayesian Reproducibility Project→

Alexander Etz on why we need a better metric for "success" in reproducibility.

Based on these two metrics, the headlines are accurate: Over half of the replications “failed”. But these two reproducibility metrics are either invalid (comparing significance levels across experiments) or very vague (confidence interval agreement). They also only offer binary answers: A replication either “succeeds” or “fails”, and this binary thinking leads to absurd conclusions in some cases like those mentioned above. Is replicability really so black and white? I will explain below how I think we should measure replicability in a Bayesian way, with a continuous measure that can find reasonable answers with replication effects near zero with wide CIs, effects near the original with tight CIs, effects near zero with tight CIs, replication effects that go in the opposite direction, and anything in between.

Estimating anatomical trajectories with Bayesian mixed-effects modeling→

Nice.

• We introduce a framework for structural trajectories using Longitudinal MRI.

• Bayesian inference on trajectories is realized using Posterior Probability Maps (PPM).

• We validate the model in simulations and real MRI data from the ADNI project.

Daniel Lakens: The perfect t-test→

Great idea from Daniel Lakens—an R script that helps you properly compare two groups.

The goal of this script is to examine whether more researcher-centered statistical tools (i.e., a one-click analysis script that checks normality assumptions, calculates effect sizes and their confidence intervals, creates good figures, calculates Bayesian and robust statistics, and writes the results section) increases the use of novel statistical procedures. Download the script here: https://github.com/Lakens/Perfect-t-test.

Introduction and overview of Bayes' theorem (Nature Methods)→

Good, brief introduction to Bayesian statistics.

What does a Bayes factor look like?→

Helpful visualization from Felix Schönbrodt.

To summarize: Whether a strong evidence “hits you between the eyes” depends on many things – the kind of test, the kind of visualization, the sample size. Sometimes a BF of 2.5 seems obvious, and sometimes it is hard to spot a BF>100 by eyeballing only. Overall, I’m glad that we have a numeric measure of strength of evidence and do not have to rely on eyeballing only.