Limiting the impact of statistics as a proverbial source of falsehood

Abstract

This paper presents an early version of a decision-making “eco” system. We refer to it as an “eco” system because it is primarily based on mathematical logic and combines concepts and principles from the fields of statistics, decision theory, artificial intelligence and modeling of human behavior. The primary goal of the proposed approach is to address errors that occur resulting from the misuse of statistical methods. In practice, such errors often occur either owning to the use of inappropriate statistical methods or wrong interpretations of results. The proposed approach relies on the LPwNF (Logic Programming without Negation as Failure) framework of non-monotonic reasoning as provided by Gorgias. The proposed system enables automatic selection of the appropriate statistical method, based on the characteristics of the problem and the sample. The expected impact could be twofold: it can enhance the use of statistical systems like R and, combined with a Java-based interface to Gorgias, make non-monotonic reasoning easy to use in the proposed context. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.