Statistical inference without frequentist justifications
pp. 289-297
in: Mauricio Surez, Mauro Dorato, Miklós Rédei (eds), Epsa epistemology and methodology of science, Berlin, Springer, 2010Abstract
Statistical inference is often justified by long-run properties of the sampling distributions, such as the repeated sampling rationale. These are frequentist justifications of statistical inference. I argue that these justifications are flawed. Then I propose a novel interpretation of probability in statistics, the artefactual interpretation. I believe that this interpretation is able to forge a link between statistical probability calculations and rational decisions on the basis of observed data. The artefactual interpretation is able to justify statistical inference without making any assumptions about probability as a part of the natural world.