Bayesian t-tests for correlations and partial correlations. Issue 10 (26th July 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wang, Min; Chen, Fang; Lu, Tao; Dong, Jianping
• Is Part Of: Journal of applied statistics. Volume 47:Issue 10(2020)
• Page Start: 1820
• Page End: 1832
• Publication Date: 2020-07-26
• Subjects: Bayes factor -- restricted most powerful Bayesian tests -- statistical evidence -- t-test -- Zellner's g-prior; Statistics -- Periodicals; 519.5
• DOI: 10.1080/02664763.2019.1695760
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0266-4763

Abstract

Abstract : In this paper, we develop Bayes factor based testing procedures for the presence of a correlation or a partial correlation. The proposed Bayesian tests are obtained by restricting the class of the alternative hypotheses to maximize the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when the Bayes factor is larger than a specified threshold. It turns out that they depend simply on the frequentist t -statistics with the associated critical values and can thus be easily calculated by using a spreadsheet in Excel and in fact by just adding one more step after one has performed the frequentist correlation tests. In addition, they are able to yield an identical decision with the frequentist paradigm, provided that the evidence threshold of the Bayesian tests is determined by the significance level of the frequentist paradigm. We illustrate the performance of the proposed procedures through simulated and real-data examples.