Statistics and Statistical Programming (Fall 2020)/pset4

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Empirical Paper Questions

Revisit the paper we read for Week 1 of the course:

Kramer, Adam D. I., Jamie E. Guillory, and Jeffrey T. Hancock. 2014. Experimental Evidence of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion through Social Networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111(24):8788–90. [Open Access]

Come to class prepared to discuss your answers to the following questions

EQ1. Hypotheses

Write down, in your own words, the key pairs of null/alternative hypotheses tested in the paper (hint: the four pairs that correspond to the main effects represented in the figure).

EQ2. Describe the effects

Describe, in your own words, the main effects estimated in the paper for these four key pairs of hypotheses.

EQ3. Statistical vs. practical significance

The authors report Cohen's d along with their regression estimates of the main effects. Look up the formula for Cohen's d. Discuss the substantive or practical significance of the estimates given the magnitudes of the d values reported.