Editing
P-3
(section)
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
==Explanation== {{incomplete}} In scientific research, a {{w|p-value}} is a threshold used to gauge how likely it is that the results found could have been due to random chance, and not due to the hypothesis being true. Using p=0.05 means there should be a 5% chance of the result being up to random chance. As the choice to use a number rounded to the nearest 5 was influenced by the commonly used decimal numeral system, which was influenced by humans having 5 fingers, it's implied that a 3-fingered alien would instead use p=0.03. (though that number is still in base 10, so it's unlikely they'd use that either) The title text implies the existence of a species using p=0.2, meaning a result had a 20% chance of occurring at random, which would lead to a lot of false positives, as in the scenario described in the title text.
Summary:
Please note that all contributions to SMBC Wiki may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see
SMBC Wiki:Copyrights
for details).
Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)
Navigation menu
Personal tools
Not logged in
Talk
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Namespaces
Page
Discussion
English
Views
Read
Edit
View history
More
Search
Navigation
Main page
Recent changes
Random page
Help about MediaWiki
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Special pages
Page information