Scientists at Amsterdam symposium suddenly consider everything in their data significant

By Rogier Kievit

During a recent 10 day symposium on applied econometrics at the University of Amsterdam, three California based scientists arrived at rather novel explanations of their data during their first afternoon in the city center.

During one of the lunch breaks, the group of world-renowned academics went to a local coffeeshop where they enjoyed some home-made brownies and a cup of coffee. During their discussion of recent data acquired in a non-linear modeling of venture capitalist risk assessment strategies, professor Backman, an award winning econometrist, suddenly remarked that he thought ‘the sky was very blue today’.

Contrary to his earlier analysis, Backman now considered the 0.3 % risk-analysis increase due to his introduction of adaptive parameter estimates ‘Incredibly significant… fascinating….’. His colleague, associate professor Winson, seemingly raptured by the brightness of his laptop screen, remarked ‘Check this out, I found a 7-way interaction effect of sex, height, ethnicity, country of origin, gross domestic product, trial number and first name. That’s awesome…. ’. Munching on a recently acquired family size box of chicken nuggets, Winson mumbled ‘I mean…. p-values are so strict and limiting… all those numbers… they’re like… very meaningful…’

Despite being one of the keynote speakers at the opening day of the conference, Backman and his team decided to instead spend the rest of the day lying in the park, brushing their faces against the grass because ‘It feels really, really strange….’.