Question

5. A vaccine against the novel coronavirus has been invented. The scientist said in an interview that the experiments yielded a statistically significant result. Explain in clear, unambiguous, statistical terms what this means. *your answer has to be perfect, yet simple enough so millions of lay people understand it. That is: simplicity without losing statistical truth.

Answer 1

Statistical significance is a determination by an analyst that the results in the data are not explainable by chance alone. Statistical hypothesis testing is the method by which the analyst makes this determination. This test provides a p-value, which is the probability of observing results as extreme as those in the data, assuming the results are truly due to chance alone. A p-value of 5% or lower is often considered to be statistically significant.

Statistical significance refers to the claim that a result from data generated by testing or experimentation is not likely to occur randomly or by chance but is instead likely to be attributable to a specific cause. Having statistical significance is important for academic disciplines or practitioners that rely heavily on analyzing data and research, such as economics, finance, investing, medicine, physics, and biology.

Statistical significance can be considered strong or weak. When analyzing a data set and doing the necessary tests to discern whether one or more variables have an effect on an outcome, strong statistical significance helps support the fact that the results are real and not caused by luck or chance. Simply stated, if a statistic has high significance then it's considered more reliable.

In terms of the given statement, we can say that the vaccine invented is very much likely to cure the corona disease

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Statistical significance is the likelihood that a relationship between two or more variables is caused by something other than chance.

Statistical significance is used to provide evidence concerning the plausibility of the null hypothesis, which hypothesizes that there is nothing more than random chance at work in the data.

Statistical hypothesis testing is used to determine whether the result of a data set is statistically significant