Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Testing directional hypotheses: p-values can bite

I've recently had interesting discussions with colleagues in Information Systems regarding testing directional hypotheses. Following their request, I'm posting about this apparently illusive issue.

In information systems research, the most common type of hypothesis is directional, i.e. the parameter of interest is hypothesized to go in a certain direction. An example would be testing the hypothesis that teenagers are more likely than older folks to use Facebook. Another example is the hypothesis that higher opening bids on eBay lead to higher final prices. In the Facebook example, the researcher would test the hypothesis by gathering data on Facebook usage by each age group, then comparing the average usage of each group, and if the teenager's average is sufficiently larger, then the hypothesis would be supported (at some statistically significant level). In the eBay example, a researcher might collect information on many eBay auctions, then fit a regression of price on the opening bid (and controlling for all other types of factors). If the regression coefficient turns out to be sufficiently larger than zero, then the researcher could conclude that the hypothesized effect is true (let's put aside issues of causality for the moment).

More formally, for the Facebook hypothesis the test statistic would be a T statistic of the form
T = (teenager Average - older folks Average) / Standard Error
The test statistic for the eBay example would also be a T statistics of the form:
T = opening-bid regression coefficient / Standard Error

Note an important point here: when stating a hypothesis as above (namely, "the alternative hypothesis"), there is always a null hypothesis that is the default. This null hypothesis is often neglected to be mentioned expliciltly in Information Systems articles, but let's make clear that in directional hypotheses such as the ones above, the null hypothesis includes both the "no effect" and the "opposite directional effect" scenarios. In the Facebook example, the null includes both the case that teenagers and older folks use Facebook equally, and that teenagers use Facebook less than older folks. In the eBay example, the null includes both cases of "opening bid doesn't affect final price" and "opening bid lowers final price".

Getting back to the T test statistics (or any other test statistic, for this matter): To evaluate whether the T is sufficiently extreme to reject the null hypothesis (and support the researcher's hypothesis), information systems researchers typically use a p-value, and compare it to some significince level. BUT, computing the p-values must take into account the directionality of the hypothesis! The default p-value that you'd get from running a regression model in any standard software is for a non-directional hypothesis! To get the directional p-value you would either divide that p-value by 2, if the sign of the T statistic is in the "right" direction (positive if your hypothesis said positive; negative if your hypothesis said negative), or you would have to use 1-p-value/2. In the first case, mistakenly using the software p-value would result in missing out on real effects (loss of statistical power), while in the latter case you might infer an effect, when there is none (or maybe there even is an effect in the opposite direction).

The solution to this confusion is to examine each hypothesis for its directionality (think what the null hypothesis is), then construct the corresponding p-value carefully. Some tests in some software packages will allow you to specify the direction and will give you a "kosher" p-value. But in many cases, regression being an example, most software will only spit out the no-directional p-value. Or just get a die-hard statistician on board.

Which reminds me again why I don't like p-values. For lovers of confidence intervals, I promise to post about confidence intervals for directional hypotheses (what is the sound of a one-sided confidence interval?)


Friday, October 09, 2009

SAS On Demand: Enterprise Miner -- Update

Following up on my previous posting about using SAS Enterprise Minder via the On Demand platform: From continued communication with experts at SAS, it turns out that with the EM version 5.3, which is the one available through On Demand, there is no way to work (or even access) non-SAS files. Their suggestion solution is to use some other SAS product like SAS BASE, or even SAS JMP (which is available through the On Demand platform) in order to convert your CSV files to SAS data files...

From both a pedagogical and practical point of view, I am reluctant to introduce SAS EM through On Demand to my MBA students. They will dislike the idea of downloading, learning, and using yet another software package (even if it is a client) just for the purpose of file conversion (from ordinary CSV files into SAS data files).

So at this point it seems as though SAS EM via the On Demand platform may be useful in SAS-based courses that use SAS data files. Hopefully SAS will upgrade the version to the latest, which is supposed to be able to handle non-SAS data files.

Saturday, October 03, 2009

SAS On Demand: Enterprise Miner

I am in the process of trying out SAS Enterprise Miner via the (relatively new) SAS On Demand for Academics. In our MBA data mining course at Smith, we introduce SAS EM. In the early days, we'd get individual student licenses and have each student install the software on their computer. However, the software took too much space and it was also very awkward to circulate a packet of CDs between multiple students. We then moved to the Server option, where SAS EM is available on the Smith School portal. Although it solved the individual installation and storage issues, the portal version is too slow to be practically useful for even a modest project. Disconnects and other problems have kept students away. So now I am hoping that the On Demand service that SAS offers (which they call SODA) will work.

For the benefit of other struggling instructors, here's my experience thus far: I have been unable to access any non-SAS data files, and therefore unable to evaluate the product. The On Demand version installed is EM 5.3, which is still very awkward in terms of importing data, and especially non-SAS data.  It requires uploading files to the SAS server via FTP, and then opening SAS EM, creating a new project, and then inserting a line or two of SAS code into the non-obvious "startup code" tab. The code includes a LIBNAME statement for creating a path to one's library, and a FILENAME statement in order to reach files in that library (thank goodness I learned SAS programming as an undergrad!). Definitely not for the faint of heart, and I suspect that MBAs won't love this either.

I've been in touch with SAS support and thus far we haven't solved the data access issue, although they helped me find the path where my files were sitting in (after logging in to SAS On Demand For Academics, and clicking on your course, click on "how to use this directory").

If you have been successful with this process, please let me know!
I will post updates when I conquer this, one way or another.