In the last days I was thinking about about how researchers could collaborate efficiently with their experts in statistics. With the increasing complexity in science, interchanging information can be crucial to get the best results. But what happens when a researcher doesn’t give all the information a statistician needs?. When someone asks for help in statistics -as a clinician, I need it often-, many biostatisticians ensure that some basic points are met in a research study -prior to their analysis-, and I think they should ask for them as soon as possible:

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I like heatplots with p-values -or frequencies, or whatever-. Not very conclusive, but pretty anyway. And when talking about graphs, pretty will make our neurons to fire in more interesting ways: neurons like “pretty” graphs. Moreover, observing your data can be as important as analysing it. It’s better to observe, to listen your patients than making tests without knowing very much about them… In the heatmaps of the previous post, not a lot of information can be included.

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Some months ago, I had to explore a vast amount of categorical variables before making some multivariate analyses. One good way to know your raw data, to make new hypotheses…etc, is to calculate some pairwise “crude” chi-square tests of independence of your factors, but it can be very time-consuming. I mean, not time-consuming to make the tests (with a simple command it can be done), but to revise all of them.

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aurora-mareviv

Anesthesiologist, MD, postdoc. Utter Rstats geek

Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

Spain