Two-Tailed p-Values and Coherent Measures of Evidence

ABSTRACT

In a test of significance, it is common practice to report the p-value as one way of summarizing the incompatibility between a set of data and a proposed model for the data constructed under a set of assumptions together with a null hypothesis. However, the p-value does have some flaws, one being in general its definition for two-sided tests and a related serious logical one of incoherence, in its interpretation as a statistical measure of evidence for its respective null hypothesis. We shall address these two issues in this article.

Keywords:

• e-Values
• Point-null, one-sided, and interval null hypotheses
• Stochastically increasing test statistic
• Unconditional and conditional e-value sampling distributions