As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, researchers are reporting findings of randomized trials comparing standard care with care augmented by experimental drugs. The trials have small sample sizes, so estimates of treatment effects are imprecise. Seeing imprecision, clinicians reading research...

Medical research has evolved conventions for choosing sample size in randomized clinical trials that rest on the theory of hypothesis testing. Bayesians have argued that trials should be designed to maximize subjective expected utility in settings of clinical interest. This perspective is...

This paper modifies the Wald development of statistical decision theory to offer new perspective on the performance of certain statistical treatment rules. We study the quantile performance of test rules, ones that use the outcomes of hypothesis tests to allocate a population to two treatments....

Statisticians have proposed meta-analysis to combine the findings of multiple studies of health risks or treatment response. The standard practice is to compute a weighted-average of the estimates. Yet it is not clear how to interpret a weighted average of estimates reported in disparate...

In the early 1940s, Haavelmo proposed a probabilistic structure for econometric modeling, aiming to make econometrics useful for public decision making. His fundamental contribution has become thoroughly embedded in subsequent econometric research, yet it could not fully answer all the deep...

Forthright characterization of scientific uncertainty is important in principle and serves important practical purposes. Nevertheless, economists and other researchers commonly report findings with incredible certitude, reporting point predictions and estimates. To motivate expression of...

COVID-19 antibody tests have imperfect accuracy. There has been lack of clarity on the meaning of reported rates of false positives and false negatives. For risk assessment and clinical decision making, the rates of interest are the positive and negative predictive values of a test. Positive...