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A test for discrete versus continuous?
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From: Ray Koopman <koop...@sfu.ca>
Newsgroups: sci.stat.math
Subject: Re: A test for discrete versus continuous?
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 08:25:24 -0700 (PDT)
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On Jul 2, 2:46 am, Gary <LanceG...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a somewhat poorly formed question but the problem it
> represents has troubled me several times in my career. Essentially
> many theories may state that a particular phenomenon exists either as
> a dimension or as a set of discrete categories. For example Reversal
> Theory in psychology states (amongst other things) that a person is
> either in a telic (purpose driven, arousal avoiding, future oriented)
> mode or in a paratelic (activity driven, arousal seeking, present
> oriented) mode and that people can't be somewhere "inbetween" the two
> modes. So Reversal theory is positing a set of two discrete categories
> and strongly claims that all people are in one or other of the two
> states and that there is no continuum between them. Similarly Fulda
> developed a mathematical model of the pull of temptation and asserts
> that the model works on discrete moments of thought (in other words
> the probabilities of temptation that are being modelled are discrete
> and not continuous). In my experience it is really hard to devise
> tests for claims of this kind. I wondered whther there are any
> existing statistical tests designed to to test hypotheses of this
> kind, or whether there are procedures and designs suitable for testing
> such claims?
>
> Lance
Look up 'taxometrics', which claims to be able to identify discrete
phenomena. I don't think it can, but many people do.
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