 
  I seem to remember a term "lurking variable." 

Bert Gunter <gunter.berton@gene.com> wrote:
  ... But of course this is always the question underlying all empirical -- or
maybe even scientific -- analysis: is there some other perhaps more
fundamental variable out there that I'm missing that would explain what's
"really" going on?

I clearly remember George Box commenting on this in his Monday night beer
and statistics sessions: after you're done and perhaps have written up and
presented your (intricate!) analysis, you're always worried that someone
might come along and say, "Well, did you consider...?"

Cheers,
Bert 

Bert Gunter
Genentech Nonclinical Statistics
South San Francisco, CA 94404


-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces@stat.math.ethz.ch
[mailto:r-help-bounces@stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Jonathan Baron
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2006 1:45 PM
To: Richard M. Heiberger
Cc: r-help@stat.math.ethz.ch; C. Park; Leeds,Mark (IED)
Subject: Re: [R] stat question - not R question so ignore if not interested

A classic example used by my colleague Paul Rozin (when he
teaches Psych 1) is to compute the correlation between height
and number of shoes owned, in the class. Shorter students own
more shoes. But ...

On 12/05/06 16:34, Richard M. Heiberger wrote:
> The missing piece is why there are two clusters. There is
> most likely a two-level factor distinguishing the groups
> that was not included in the model. It might not even have
> been measured and now you need to find it.
> 
> Rich

-- 
Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron
Editor: Judgment and Decision Making (http://journal.sjdm.org)

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