✍️ Coursework (Formative)

Author

Dr. Jon Cardoso-Silva

Published

12 February 2023

🎯 OBJECTIVE: Discover what p-hacking is and reflect on how to avoid it.

⌛ DEADLINE: 27 February 2023.

Note
  • You can choose to write it as an individual or in pairs.
  • I will give you feedback on your notes if you submit them via Moodle.

Instructions

  • Create an R Markdown and name it LSE_DS101L_2022_23_W05_formative.Rmd.
  • Because this is a formative assessment, submission is not anonymous. Therefore, please include your name(s) in the document.
  • Feel free to format this document however you like. You will learn how to work better with R Markdown in the next weeks.

Submission

  • After writing, knit your RMarkdown document to HTML and submit it on Moodle. See this video for a quick tutorial on how to knit your RMarkdown document to HTML.

Tasks

Task 1

  • Read the article referenced in the indicative readings of the week, (Aschwanden 2015).
  • Now answer the following questions:
    • What is p-hacking?
    • What are the consequences of p-hacking?
    • How should researchers avoid p-hacking?

Task 2:

  • Think back to the small but tidy data you collected for the Formative 1.
  • Suppose you were to create a linear model that would predict a dependent variable called number_of_people_affected of Wikipedia’s ongoing events.
  • Now answer the following questions:
    • What would you use as independent variables?
    • How would you handle missing data?
    • What would be your null and alternative hypotheses?
    • How would you avoid p-hacking?

References

Aschwanden, Christie. 2015. “Science Isn’t Broken.” FiveThirtyEight. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/.