‘Just be confident girls!’: Confidence Chic as Neoliberal Governmentality

In our injurious patriarchal cultures, unconfidence is almost inescapable when inhabiting womanhood. However, recently the promotion of self-confidence has surfaced as the site for expanded, heightened and more insidious modes of regulation, often spearheaded by those very institutions invested in women’s insecurities. This notably includes consumer women’s magazines. Contemporary publications are marked by an intensified preoccupation with taking readers ‘from crisis to confidence’, offering even dedicated sections (e.g. ‘confidence revolution’ and ‘Bye-bye body hang-ups’ in Cosmopolitan UK) and issues—see, for example, Elle UK’s January 2015 ‘Confidence Issue: A Smart Woman’s Guide to Self-Belief’. Clearly, this sector is a fundamental player in the confidence movement-market, bringing together a range of interested parties, not least ‘love your body’ (LYB) advertisers like Dove (see Gill and Elias 2014), and enjoying an extensive audience reach, both in terms of numbers and geography—a reach increased to unprecedented degrees by online versions

P values, confidence intervals, or confidence levels for hypotheses?

Null hypothesis significance tests and p values are widely used despite very strong arguments against their use in many contexts. Confidence intervals are often recommended as an alternative, but these do not achieve the objective of assessing the credibility of a hypothesis, and the distinction between confidence and probability is an unnecessary confusion. This paper proposes a more straightforward (probabilistic) definition of confidence, and suggests how the idea can be applied to whatever hypotheses are of interest to researchers. The relative merits of the different approaches are discussed using a series of illustrative examples: usually confidence based approaches seem more transparent and useful, but there are some contexts in which p values may be appropriate. I also suggest some methods for converting results from one format to another. (The attractiveness of the idea of confidence is demonstrated by the widespread persistence of the completely incorrect idea that p=5% is equivalent to 95% confidence in the alternative hypothesis. In this paper I show how p values can be used to derive meaningful confidence statements, and the assumptions underlying the derivation.) Key words: Confidence interval, Confidence level, Hypothesis testing, Null hypothesis significance tests, P value, User friendliness.Comment: The essential argument is unchanged from previous versions, but the paper has been largely rewritten, the argument extended, and more examples and background context included. 21 pages, 3 diagrams, 3 table

Shrinkage Confidence Procedures

The possibility of improving on the usual multivariate normal confidence was first discussed in Stein (1962). Using the ideas of shrinkage, through Bayesian and empirical Bayesian arguments, domination results, both analytic and numerical, have been obtained. Here we trace some of the developments in confidence set estimation.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-STS319 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Confidence driven TGV fusion

We introduce a novel model for spatially varying variational data fusion, driven by point-wise confidence values. The proposed model allows for the joint estimation of the data and the confidence values based on the spatial coherence of the data. We discuss the main properties of the introduced model as well as suitable algorithms for estimating the solution of the corresponding biconvex minimization problem and their convergence. The performance of the proposed model is evaluated considering the problem of depth image fusion by using both synthetic and real data from publicly available datasets

Adaptive confidence balls

Adaptive confidence balls are constructed for individual resolution levels as well as the entire mean vector in a multiresolution framework. Finite sample lower bounds are given for the minimum expected squared radius for confidence balls with a prespecified confidence level. The confidence balls are centered on adaptive estimators based on special local block thresholding rules. The radius is derived from an analysis of the loss of this adaptive estimator. In addition adaptive honest confidence balls are constructed which have guaranteed coverage probability over all of $\mathbb{R}^N$ and expected squared radius adapting over a maximum range of Besov bodies.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009053606000000146 in the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Maximum Confidence Quantum Measurements

We consider the problem of discriminating between states of a specified set with maximum confidence. For a set of linearly independent states unambiguous discrimination is possible if we allow for the possibility of an inconclusive result. For linearly dependent sets an analogous measurement is one which allows us to be as confident as possible that when a given state is identified on the basis of the measurement result, it is indeed the correct state.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

US Outlook and German Confidence: Does the Confidence Channel Work?

One channel of business cycle shock transmission which gained attraction only recently is the confidence channel. The aim of the paper is to find out whether the confidence channel is actually working between the US and Germany. This is analysed using times series methods. In contrast to other studies the direct informational content of leading US indicators for German producer confidence and the significance of asymmetric reactions is tested. The results show that there is a relationship between the respective variables, which has become closer during the nineties. However the hypothesis of asymmetries had to be rejected.Confidence Channel, Business Cycle, Leading Indicators