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Title: The difference between “equivalent” and “not different”

Journal Article · · Quality Engineering
 [1];  [2]
  1. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States). Statistical Sciences Group
  2. Arizona State Univ., Phoenix, AZ (United States). School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences
+ Show Author Affiliations

Often, experimenters wish to establish that populations of units can be considered equivalent to each other, in order to leverage improved knowledge about one population for characterizing the new population, or to establish the comparability of items. Equivalence tests have existed for many years, but their use in industry seems to have been largely restricted to biomedical applications, such as for assessing the equivalence of two drugs or protocols. We present the fundamentals of equivalence tests, compare them to traditional two-sample and ANOVA tests that are better suited to establishing differences in populations, and propose the use of a graphical summary to compare p-values across different thresholds of practically important differences.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-06NA25396
OSTI ID:
1224047
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-15-20072
Journal Information:
Quality Engineering, Vol. 2015, Issue 3; ISSN 0898-2112
Publisher:
American Society for Quality ControlCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 12 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (7)

Simultaneous and selective inference: Current successes and future challenges journal November 2010
Bioequivalence trials, intersection-union tests and equivalence confidence setsCommentCommentCommentCommentCommentRejoinder journal November 1996
Design and Analysis of Method Equivalence Studies journal December 2009
Method Validation in Pharmaceutical Analysis book January 2005
Beyond the t-Test: Statistical Equivalence Testing journal June 2005
A Method for Determining Equivalence in Industrial Applications journal March 2002
The Status of Multiple Comparisons: Simultaneous Estimation of all Pairwise Comparisons in One-Way ANOVA Designs journal August 1981

Cited By (3)

Bayesian probability of predictive agreement for comparing the outcome of two separate regressions: Bayesian probability of predictive agreement for comparing the outcome of two separate regressions
  • Stevens, Nathaniel T.; Rigdon, Steven E.; Anderson-Cook, Christine M.
  • Quality and Reliability Engineering International, Vol. 34, Issue 6 https://doi.org/10.1002/qre.2284
journal April 2018
How to Host An Effective Data Competition: Statistical Advice for Competition Design and Analysis
  • Anderson‐Cook, Christine M.; Myers, Kary L.; Lu, Lu
  • Statistical Analysis and Data Mining: The ASA Data Science Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1002/sam.11404
journal February 2019
Bayesian probability of agreement for comparing the similarity of response surfaces journal April 2019

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Related Subjects

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
Mathematics