2015/08/22 by Andrew Gelman, Christian Hennig, Gelman, Andrew +1 · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · #Applications (stat.AP) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Other Statistics (stat.OT) #Philosophy and History of Science
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1508.05453
openalex publication_date 2015/08/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We argue that the words "objectivity" and "subjectivity" in statistics discourse are used in a mostly unhelpful way, and we propose to replace each of them with broader collections of attributes, with objectivity replaced by transparency, consensus, impartiality, and correspondence to observable reality, and subjectivity replaced by awareness of multiple perspectives and context dependence. The advantage of these reformulations is that the replacement terms do not oppose each other. Instead of debating over whether a given statistical method is subjective or objective (or normatively debating the relative merits of subjectivity and objectivity in statistical practice), we can recognize desirable attributes such as transparency and acknowledgment of multiple perspectives as complementary goals. We demonstrate the implications of our proposal with recent applied examples from pharmacology, election polling, and socioeconomic stratification.