November, 2015

Nov 28 2015

How significant is that?

When you look at survey results do you ask yourself ‘Are there numbers statistically significant? Yes or no?’ ‘Significance’ is a commonly used word in statistics. Significance tests suggest confidence in survey findings; that the findings matter and are meaningful.  But perhaps a term like ‘meaningful’ may be a more helpful way to assess statistics […]

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Nov 16 2015

Ice creams cause drownings. And other causal relationship myths

      Ice creams cause drownings. And there are numbers to prove it.  If you take the number of ice creams sold and compare it to the number of drownings there is clearly an upward trend. And it is therefore safe to conclude from this that we should ban ice cream because ice cream […]

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Nov 6 2015

How good is good?

The practice of evaluation involves arriving at succinct answers to important questions. This is also known as evaluative reasoning. Evaluative reasoning is what distinguishes from research. Evaluations involve  conducting research, but they go further, to determine merit of worth, with the aim of making evaluative conclusions. To evaluate is to make deductive arguments and claims […]

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