Plausibility and the Solution to the Behrens-Fisher Problem

'Plausibility and the Solution to the Behrens-Fisher Problem' is a detective story that reveals the solution to a mathematical conundrum that has kept statisticians perplexed for over a century.

The problem concerns what we can say about the difference between the true mean values of two normal distributions from the information available in small samples.

Despite years of attempts by academia to find the answer, usually involving either Fisher's notion of 'fiducial probability' or Bayes' Rul...