It’s that time of year when everyone has writing a list a checking it twice, thinking about whether they’ve been naughty or nice … you know how it goes as Christmas gets closer and closer! So for a special Christmas post to Stats Come 2 U I have decided to put together a little Christmas […]
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November is Academic Writing Month, #AcWriMo and the StatsCome2U team is getting on board with a blog post about how to write the statistical methods section of your paper. In some journals it is customary to put the Methods section in small font, or even to move it after the main Introduction-Results-Discussion-Conclusion sections. I think […]
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The data is in, the hours in the lab or in the field are over, and it’s time to tackle the statistical analysis of your data. But how to organise the data or notes or papers that form the core of the evidence for your research question? As is so often the case, the answer […]
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With a name like mine, it was easy when I was growing up to love reading Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. In that second book Alice encounters Humpty Dumpty and the conversation goes like this: “ ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful […]
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Still carrying on about p-values? Yes absolutely! It runs out that some have interpreted the American Statistical Association’s statement on p-values as official ASA policy, on the one hand; and on the other hand, as statisticians abandoning p-values entirely. That’s not what was intended, writes Karen Kafadar, President of the ASA and Editor-in-Chief of the […]
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Perhaps the most popular question SCU consultants get asked is whether it is better to report a standard deviation or a standard error. This question is always built upon a fundamental misunderstanding of these two very different concepts. I suspect that students have missed the point because their supervisors tell them, for example, to use […]
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You could be forgiven for feeling a bit confused about the most appropriate way to summarise the statistical results of your research. Seems like in the past a p-value was all you needed. If p < 0.05, hooray! Significant result, paper published. If p > 0.05, misery! Non-significant result, paper pushed into bottom of filing […]
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On May 12, it’ll be International Women in Maths Day. This is a joyful opportunity for the mathematical community to celebrate women in mathematics. The goal of the day is to inspire women everywhere to celebrate their achievements in mathematics, and to encourage an open, welcoming and inclusive work environment for everybody. The celebration takes […]
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It’s an alphabet soup out there for researchers looking for guidelines to follow in their chosen style of research. Depending on your discipline, you may have come across some of these already. There’s CONSORT for randomised trials, STROBE for observational studies, PRISMA for systematic reviews, and ARRIVE for animal research, to name but a few. […]
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“By a small sample we may judge the whole piece.”Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616). So you plan to run a survey as part of your quantitative research? How are you going to select your sample? If you haven’t thought much about this, it’s important to realise that sampling strategies matter quite a lot. If your goals […]
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Congratulations on starting your research degree at ANU! Whether you are on campus or studying remotely, you are joining a large and diverse community of researchers who are all striving to push back the boundaries of knowledge in their field. Thousands of students have graduated from the ANU Honours, Masters and PhD program who have […]
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“It was a summer afternoon in Cambridge, England, in the late 1920s. A group of university dons, their wives, and some guests were sitting around an outdoor table for afternoon tea. One of the women was insisting that tea tasted different depending upon whether the tea was poured into the milk or whether the milk […]
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2020 has been an extraordinary year in every sense of the word. Many of you got a tough lesson in resilience with your research plan being interrupted or even obliterated due to extreme weather or pandemic. Some may have taken the time to use this forced pause to upskill and we have certainly been encouraged […]
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November is Academic Writing Month at ANU. No better time thus to put the translation process of data to words in the spotlight. “The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact minded culture, is employed to sensationalise, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify. Statistical methods and statistical terms are necessary in reporting the mass data […]
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Today is World Statistics Day 2020! Now, I can hear you think: Is there a day for statistics? Like, really?? Surely this is only celebrated by statisticians a.k.a. old grey bearded men? Thankfully we are long past the time when checking the box for sporting a grey beard was required to obtain the qualification of […]
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Last month we discussed that learning the language of statistics is crucial to communicating your research. Now is the time to look a bit more closely at some ambiguous terms that are often thrown around in conversations on analysis of research data. Obviously, this is not an exhaustive list and if you would like to […]
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When you think of statistics, do you associate it with equations, mathematics and complex formulae? Have you also realised that there is a whole language associated with the area? Learning and using statistics requires you to understand the language of statistics (Dunn et al. 2016). And let’s be honest, this language can sometimes be confusing […]
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We are honoured this month to have a guest blog from Nidhi Menon. Nidhi is a Biostatistician within BDSI, supporting the Health Analytics Research Centre (HARC), a collaboration between ACT Health and its academic partners focused on health data science and research methods as well as analytics in both qualitative and quantitative areas. Her PhD was […]
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During its history of almost 40 years, the SCU has collected a big archive and some of that material is still relevant today. The Letters of SCU series will bring out some of these masterpieces to bring age-old problems back in the limelight. Dear SCU, Please help me with this intransigent referee! I have two […]
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