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Don't Get Too Confident: Uncertainty in SDρ

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2017

Scott B. Morris*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Illinois Institute of Technology
Samuel T. McAbee
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Illinois Institute of Technology
Ronald S. Landis
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Illinois Institute of Technology
Kristina N. Bauer
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Illinois Institute of Technology
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Scott B. Morris, Department of Psychology, Illinois Institute of Technology, 3105 South Dearborn, Chicago, IL 60616. E-mail: [email protected]

Extract

Tett, Hundley, and Christiansen (2017) raise an important issue related to meta-analysis and our frequent overinterpretation of point estimates to the diminishment of variability of the estimate. We view this as analogous to the situation in which weather forecasters communicate the likely track of hurricanes. Such predictions involve point estimates of where the center of the storm is likely to be at some future time. These point estimates can be connected to identify the most likely path of the storm. In addition to these point estimates, however, forecasters caution that we should also attend to the “cone of uncertainty.” That is, we should not focus exclusively on the point estimate to the exclusion of the errors of prediction.

Type
Commentaries
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2017 

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