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On Thursday, December 20, 2012 12:43:23 PM UTC-5, Scott wrote:

This is a really old and tired debate. But I just want to clarify your
position on one thing before *I* close the books on this one. So it is
your position that Howard Ferstler is right when he says that his
results show a *95% confidence level that the results were due to
chance* and John Atkinson is wrong when he says the results show the
opposite, that they show a *95%, or more precisely a 94.6% confidence
level that the results were not due to chance?* Because *that is what
they actually claimed.* Just for the record are you really saying
Howard got that right and John got that wrong?

Neither is being precisely correct, but Howard at least got the conclusion =
right: His result did not achieve a 95% confidence level, and therefore he =
cannot reject the null hypothesis. John is, as they say, lying with statist=
ics by trying to reset the confidence level after the fact. Had John said t=
hat there was a 94.6% probability that Howard's result was not due to chanc=
e, he would have been correct. To use the term "confidence level" in this c=
ontext, and to further state that this "suggested" that Howard heard a diff=
erence, is an abuse of statistics. Your repeated claim that Howard got a po=
sitive result is similarly mistaken.

bob