Abstract
A “stopping rule” in a sequential experiment is a rule or procedure for deciding when that experiment should end. Accordingly, the “stopping rule principle” (SRP) states that, in a sequential experiment, the evidential relationship between the final data and an hypothesis under consideration does not depend on the experiment’s stopping rule: the same data should yield the same evidence, regardless of which stopping rule was used. In this essay, I reconstruct and rebut five independent arguments for the SRP. Reminding oneself that the stopping rule is a part of an experiment’s design and is no more mysterious than many other design aspects helps elucidate why some of these arguments for the SRP are unsound.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 29 |
| Journal | European Journal for Philosophy of Science |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 1 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Thanks to Greg Gandenberger, Kasey Genin, Jonathan Livengood, Dan Malinksy, Conor Mayo-Wilson, Jan Sprenger, and an anonymous referee for comments on a previous version, and audiences at Minnesota, Munich, Bologna (SILFS2017), Edinburgh (BSPS2017), and Exeter (EPSA2017) for their insightful comments. Part of this work was completed with the support of a European Commission Marie Curie Fellowship (PIIF-GA-2013-628533).
Funding Information:
Acknowledgements Thanks to Greg Gandenberger, Kasey Genin, Jonathan Livengood, Dan Malinksy, Conor Mayo-Wilson, Jan Sprenger, and an anonymous referee for comments on a previous version, and audiences at Minnesota, Munich, Bologna (SILFS2017), Edinburgh (BSPS2017), and Exeter (EPSA2017) for their insightful comments. Part of this work was completed with the support of a European Commission Marie Curie Fellowship (PIIF-GA-2013-628533).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, Springer Nature B.V.
Keywords
- Experimental design
- Likelihood principle
- Optional stopping
- Statistical evidence
- Statistical testing
- Stopping rules