I did a biology undergraduate degree and often did reports where would statistically analyse our results. P value of less than 0.05 shows that the results are statistically significant. How do these tests actually know the data is significant? For example we might look at correlation and get a significant positive correlation between two variables. Given that variables can be literally anything in question, how does doing a few statistical calculations determine it is significant? I always thought there must be more nuance as the actual variables can be so many different things. It might show me a significant relationship for two sociological variables and also for two mathematical, when those variables are so different?
In: Mathematics
How I learned to understand significance is that P-value = probability value.
It’s the probability of the effect your stats test is measuring is due to random variation instead of causality.
In biology variation is the name of the game, so it’s important to know the odds of what you’re seeing is due to variation.
We accept under 0.05 as significant, because 5% chance of random vs 95% not was considered acceptable. But no matter how small the p-value is, there is always a chance it’s random and not significant.
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