Peter Westfall is a distinguished professor of information systems and quantitative sciences at Texas Tech University. He specializes in using statistics in investing, technical analysis, and trading.

Statistical significance is a critical concept in data analysis and research. In essence, it’s a measure that allows researchers to assess whether the results of an experiment or study are due to ...

How many statisticians does it take to ensure at least a 50 percent chance of a disagreement about p-values? According to a tongue-in-cheek assessment by statistician George Cobb of Mount Holyoke ...

A century ago, two oddly domestic puzzles helped set the rules for what modern science treats as "real": a Guinness brewer charged with quality control and a British lady insisting she can taste ...

Significance testing, with appropriate multiple testing correction, is currently the most convenient method for summarizing the evidence for association between a disease and a genetic variant.

Low statistical power undermines the purpose of scientific research; it reduces the chance of detecting a true effect. Perhaps less intuitively, low power also reduces the likelihood that a ...

The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics tasked the Committee on National Statistics to undertake a consensus panel study to examine the degree of transparency and reproducibility of ...

In presidential elections, even the smallest changes in horse-race poll results seem to become imbued with deep meaning. But they are often overstated. Pollsters ...

The Statistical & Data Sciences (SDS) Program links faculty and students from across the college interested in learning things from data. At Smith, students learn statistics by doing—class time ...