ERC Advanced Grant for Peter Grünwald of the CWI

On April 11, 2024, it was announced that Peter Grünwald received a prestigious ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million euros. This funding will be used to develop a more robust and flexible statistical theory based on the novel concept of the e-value. This will lead to more reliable methods for determining whether scientific results are statistically significant—in short, the e-value is the new p-value.

The p-value methodology, developed in the 1930s, and the use of confidence intervals, according to Grünwald, are not suitable for the way science is conducted today. These methods were designed for one-shot research and do not fit well with modern research processes, such as in drug trials where experiments are often repeated. Grünwald's new statistical theory will utilize the e-value, which is more flexible and is not limited by predetermined assumptions such as the total number of participants or the costs of a study.

This new e-value concept, introduced in 2019, has already proven useful for several statistical problems and will now be further developed for more complex applications. Grünwald is delighted that the EU has funded this radical proposal, which will make statistics both safer and more flexible, allowing for more reliable conclusions to be drawn from less data.

Read more about his theory here.