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This is somewhat ill-defined, but: Why is Wald's decision theory not universally recognized as the foundation of statistics? I gather (or maybe I infer) that it was formulated to put frequentist and Bayesian methods (or any other kind of methods) into a common framework, so that they could be compared in a quantitative way for a wide range of problems.

But I gather that this has not really worked out, in that there are some settings where 'respectable' modern statisticians would still use estimators that are known to be inadmissible in a Waldian sense (like using the usual estimate of the vector mean in three or more dimensions). Why is this? Because loss functions are typically only an approximate stand-in for the true loss function in real problems, which is hard to specify?

I realize this question is rather vague, and I appreciate your patience.

Adam L. Taylor
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    Not a full answer but here's a few reasons ... 1. Not everything people are interested in when looking at statistics is necessarily best considered as *choice* under uncertainty. 2. It assumes we "know" more than we do. 3. Results often need to be explainable and interpretable to a wider audience; marginal gains in some guess at a loss function on a model that isn't actually correct surely don't always trump that. – Glen_b Jan 05 '16 at 23:55
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    I have knowingly used inadmissible estimators because the cost of computing an admissible one was potentially much greater than the additional expected loss. In other words, when you expand your assessment of loss to include the cost of conducting the statistical analysis in the first place, an inadmissible estimator according to the textbook may become admissible in practice. – whuber Jan 06 '16 at 00:24
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    I agree with both comments above, namely that admissibility is not a universal notion in that it depends on the loss function. For instance, the Stein effect boundary $p=3$ only relates to the quadratic loss. Larry Brown proved that there exists a loss function associated with every possible boundary $p$. – Xi'an Jan 06 '16 at 08:34
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    See [Perlman & Wu (1999), "The Emperor’s new tests", Statist. Sci, **14**, 4](https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.ss/1009212517) (& the comments & rejoinder). – Scortchi - Reinstate Monica Jan 06 '16 at 10:22
  • It's possible Fisher's attacks on Wald after he (Wald) died didn't help things. – Robert de Graaf May 15 '17 at 11:14

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