Beyond Neyman-Pearson: e-values enable hypothesis testing with a data-driven alpha

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autore principale: Grünwald, Peter
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2022
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866916189963288576
author Grünwald, Peter
author_facet Grünwald, Peter
contents A standard practice in statistical hypothesis testing is to mention the p-value alongside the accept/reject decision. We show the advantages of mentioning an e-value instead. With p-values, it is not clear how to use an extreme observation (e.g. p $\ll α$) for getting better frequentist decisions. With e-values it is straightforward, since they provide Type-I risk control in a generalized Neyman-Pearson setting with the decision task (a general loss function) determined post-hoc, after observation of the data -- thereby providing a handle on `roving $α$'s'. When Type-II risks are taken into consideration, the only admissible decision rules in the post-hoc setting turn out to be e-value-based. Similarly, if the loss incurred when specifying a faulty confidence interval is not fixed in advance, standard confidence intervals and distributions may fail whereas e-confidence sets and e-posteriors still provide valid risk guarantees. Sufficiently powerful e-values have by now been developed for a range of classical testing problems. We discuss the main challenges for wider development and deployment.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2205_00901
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beyond Neyman-Pearson: e-values enable hypothesis testing with a data-driven alpha
Grünwald, Peter
Methodology
A standard practice in statistical hypothesis testing is to mention the p-value alongside the accept/reject decision. We show the advantages of mentioning an e-value instead. With p-values, it is not clear how to use an extreme observation (e.g. p $\ll α$) for getting better frequentist decisions. With e-values it is straightforward, since they provide Type-I risk control in a generalized Neyman-Pearson setting with the decision task (a general loss function) determined post-hoc, after observation of the data -- thereby providing a handle on `roving $α$'s'. When Type-II risks are taken into consideration, the only admissible decision rules in the post-hoc setting turn out to be e-value-based. Similarly, if the loss incurred when specifying a faulty confidence interval is not fixed in advance, standard confidence intervals and distributions may fail whereas e-confidence sets and e-posteriors still provide valid risk guarantees. Sufficiently powerful e-values have by now been developed for a range of classical testing problems. We discuss the main challenges for wider development and deployment.
title Beyond Neyman-Pearson: e-values enable hypothesis testing with a data-driven alpha
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.00901