“(Coining the phrase ‘test of significance’): Critical tests of this kind may be called tests of significance, and when such tests are available we may discover whether a second sample is or is not significantly different from the first.”

Statistical Methods for Research Workers, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1925, p. 43.
1910s–1920s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "(Coining the phrase ‘test of significance’): Critical tests of this kind may be called tests of significance, and when …" by Ronald Fisher?
Ronald Fisher photo
Ronald Fisher 28
English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, a… 1890–1962

Related quotes

Phil Liggett photo
Henry George photo

“I propose in this inquiry to take nothing for granted, but to bring even accepted theories to the test of first principles, and should they not stand the test, freshly to interrogate facts in the endeavor to discover their law.
I propose to beg no question, to shrink from no conclusion, but to follow truth wherever it may lead.”

Introductory : The Problem
Progress and Poverty (1879)
Context: I propose in this inquiry to take nothing for granted, but to bring even accepted theories to the test of first principles, and should they not stand the test, freshly to interrogate facts in the endeavor to discover their law.
I propose to beg no question, to shrink from no conclusion, but to follow truth wherever it may lead. Upon us is the responsibility of seeking the law, for in the very heart of our civilization to-day women faint and little children moan. But what that law may prove to be is not our affair. If the conclusions that we reach run counter to our prejudices, let us not flinch; if they challenge institutions that have long been deemed wise and natural, let us not turn back.

Albert Einstein photo

“Ethical axioms are founded and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

"The Laws of Science and the Laws of Ethics" (1950)
1950s, Out of My Later Years (1950)

Rachel Riley photo
Rick Warren photo
Koichi Tohei photo
Richard Dawkins photo

“So-called alternative medicine either hasn’t been tested or it has failed its tests.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)
Context: If any remedy is tested under controlled scientific conditions and proved to be effective, it will cease to be alternative and will simply become medicine. So-called alternative medicine either hasn’t been tested or it has failed its tests.

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner photo

“Our society needs women to be more numerous in decision-making positions and in entrepreneurial areas. We always have to pass a twofold test: first to prove that, though women, we are no idiots, and second, the test anybody has to pass.”

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (1953) Argentine politician and ex President of Argentina

Nota en Clarin 20/10/2005 http://www.clarin.com/diario/2005/10/20/elpais/p-01201.htm
Unsourced, 2005

Paul Karl Feyerabend photo

“Such assumptions may be perfectly plausible and even true. Still, one should occasionally put them to a test. Putting them to a test means that we stop using the methodology associated with them, start doing science in a different way and see what happens.”

Pg 295-296.
Against Method (1975)
Context: Naive falsificationism takes it for granted that the laws of nature are manifest an not hidden beneath disturbances of considerable magnitude. Empiricism takes it for granted that sense experience is a better mirror of the world than pure thought. Praise of argument takes it for granted that the artifices of Reason give better results than the unchecked play of our emotions. Such assumptions may be perfectly plausible and even true. Still, one should occasionally put them to a test. Putting them to a test means that we stop using the methodology associated with them, start doing science in a different way and see what happens.

Related topics