ErrorBarsWhattheytellyouandwhattheydont.ppt

Error BarsWhat they tell you and what they don’tJody CulhamfMRI Journal ClubMay 29, 2006 Why Graphs and Error Bars? The picturing of data allows us to be sensitive not only to the multiple hypotheses that we hold, but to the many more we have not yet thought of, regard as unlikely, or think impossible. -- Tukey, 1974 Popularity of Error Bars growing use often expected by reviewers, readers and listeners at talks APA recommends them (but doesn’t seem to get them) stat and graphics packages make them easy to add What Do Scientists Think Error Bars Tell Them? Add a second data point with equally-sized error bars such that the difference between the two groups is just barely statistically significant (by a two-tailed t-test, p .05) What Do Scientists Think Error Bars Tell Them? Belia et al., 2005, Psychological Methods Recruited 3,944 authors of papers in high-impact journals in Psychology, Behavioral Neuroscience, and Medicine and gave them that test online (15% return rate) Also quantified use of error bars in publications in those fields Psychologists don’t use error bars much Neuroscientists usually use SE error bars in figures Medical researchers report 95% CIs in text What Scientists Think SE Bars Tell Them p .10 What Scientists Think 95%CI Bars Tell Them What Do Error Bars Tell You? It depends what type of error bars you use standard deviation (SD) standard error (SE) 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) It depends what your questions are “What is the likely mean of a population?” Error bars, particularly 95%CI are valuable “Are two groups significantly different?” Error bars can be informative if you know how to interpret them “Are two conditions tested in the same subjects significantly different?” Conventional error bars are completely uninformative Computation of Standard Deviation variance (s2) = spread around mean standard deviation = s = SQRT(s2) ~average distance of points from mean (with outliers weighted heavily because of squaring) What Does Standa