Test and Proof
The term proof descended from its Latin roots (provable, probable, probare L.) meaning to test. Hence, proof is a form of inference by means of a statistical test. Statistical tests are formulated on models that generate probability distributions. Examples of probability distributions might include the binary, normal, or poisson distribution that give exact descriptions of variables that behave according to natural laws of random chance. When a statistical test is applied to samples of a population, the test determines if the sample statistics are significantly different from the assumed null-model. True values of a population, which are unknowable in practice, are called parameters of the population. Researchers sample from populations, which provide estimates of the parameters, to calculate the mean or standard deviation. If the entire population is sampled, then the sample statistic mean and distribution will converge with the parametric distribution.
Using the scientific method of falsification, the probability value that the sample statistic is sufficiently different from the null-model than can be explained by chance alone is given prior to the test. Most statisticians set the prior probability value at 0.05 or 0.1, which means if the sample statistics diverge from the parametric model more than 5 (or 10) times out of 100, then the discrepancy is unlikely to be explained by chance alone and the null-hypothesis is rejected. Statistical models provide exact outcomes of the parametric and estimates of the sample statistics. Hence, the burden of proof rests in the sample statistics that provide estimates of a statistical model. Statistical models contain the mathematical proof of the parametric values and their probability distributions.
Read more about this topic: Statistical Proof
Famous quotes containing the words test and/or proof:
“Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state. If they are to be treated as anything but trivial exercises of the imagination. I suggest there is a simple test we can apply.... We must forget the whole paraphernalia of social description, demonstration, expostulation, approbation, condemnation. We have to say to ourselves, “How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?””
—William Golding (b. 1911)
“The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, and which life reveals, is the most living proof of our immortality.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)